When Control Has Never Been the Answer.

Whew.

Timing is actually everything. It never tends to amaze me that in a season of growth and healing that things fall into our laps that challenge that season and enhance it.

There have been so many times that I bought a book and then waited months to pick it up and realized the wait was actually necessary.

Then there are times the book releases as the right moment and you snatch it up and everything that has been swirling in your mind and in your life makes perfect sense.

Control.

This is something I know well. I have spent most of my life trying to control everything around me. Fear was the lead and I was the led. It was an absolute trauma response, but it also was an absolute fear response.

I truly lived in a place that if I did this, planned this, helped that…it would all work. People would change…things would stop…healing and reconciliation would begin…the world would be a field of flowers and everything would be PERFECT.

I like to look back at these part of my life and call it Delusional Land. It was like a mental and emotional amusement park that I chose to walk into over and over and think that one small shift would change the outcome this time.

Crazy.

And truly, I find myself wanting to buy another ticket sometimes, but one thing I know for sure. My desire to control has NEVER given the result I thought I was controlling for. It has ended up with me more hurt, more confused and more lost.

The fact is, when I am trying to control, I am not living in trust. Trust in the One I know has a plan and a purpose. That His ways are greater. I live in a place that I forget I am not responsible for the choices of others and instead take on responsibility that isn’t mine…I have found myself in that place again…giving help out of love and a desire to be “helpful” and instead…well lesson learned, again.

May this be the time I really take this lesson. The only thing I want to be controlling is my ability to say no and my ability to know that not everything is my responsibility to fix.

Loving people isn’t easy. It is painful. It puts you in a place of being vulnerable and open to hurt. When we try to control that love and push someone else or ourselves in a place they or us don’t want to be, it turns into a ticking time bomb. And when it goes, the chaos…the outcome…the sheer volume of emotion was never worth the control that was never ours to begin with.

It is actually exhausting.

And I am tired of being tired. My desire for peace isn’t the problem. Its the fact that I think I am the one who can organize the peace that is.

Letting go and letting God sounds simple. Actually doing it…well, another lesson learned in what not to do is where I ended up in my desire to let myself fix it.

He knows.

I know this.

I know He sends all the little warnings to stop my need to control. To remind me He has got this. May prayer as I continue to walk through healing and growth is that this time, the mark the hurt left on me is the one I will see when I think I can do it all myself next time.

Letting go and letting God should be the only action we take.