Sumbission, part 2

It seems to have been last week that my little trial became apparently more intense. For whatever reason there may be, my mind flashed to the football camp scene from the movie Remember the Titans. It's the part where the coach asks, "What are you?" Their response comes loud and clear, "Agile! Mobile! Hostile!" Coach Boone then asks, "Will you ever quit?" The team resounds their intense reply, "NO! WE WANT SOME MORE! WE WANT SOME MORE!" That lead me to ponder my situation further. I thought, "Hmmm, I'm here in the crucible in the middle of the refiner's fire. I can feel and see some imperfections and impurities in myself." My thoughts lead me to want to ask the Lord to turn up the heat so such things would burn off quicker. "I know I can do anything so long as He's with me," I thought, "I can face it if He goes with me." Luckily my thought process didn't end there. It struck me how impatient it would be to actually ask the Lord to quicken the process. I also noted how little that would demonstrate trust in the Lord's knowledge and understanding. My final thought drifted back to, "Not my will, but Thine be done. Do what is necessary, Lord and take all the time You need to. Grant me patience to see this through." It was rather humbling to realize that I was being impatient and distrustful.
More often than not the Lord is like a dentist. So long as we're taking care of our mouth and teeth, the visit is routine and relatively painless. However none of us will take perfect care of our teeth. We go in to have something done about some pain or odor, etc. Frankly, I want my mouth to come out perfect. I do what little I can, but the rest must be done by the Master Dentist. My attitude, then, must be, "Here I am Lord. Do what you must to make me better. Take the time You must." Dentistry isn't always as quick as we would like. We might be in the chair for several hours. We may need several follow-up visits. That's okay; it's normal. What is not okay is to sit in the chair and say, "Ya know, I have another appointment in an hour, can you hurry it up?" and certainly not, "There's a pain in my left eye-tooth and you're not doing anything about it. Do you really know what you're doing?"
We must exercise our faith in the Lord in such times. We hold on our way, trusting that the Man doing the work knows what He's doing. We know He has walked with us in times past and when the path became too hard He carried us. We can't rush the work, but we can ask for our faith in His knowledge to give us patience until we reach the end of the ordeal.