How Controlling Are You?

My mom was certainly surprised when she found this little guy in her pear tree!

If I have learned anything at all from my time here on this planet, it’s to expect the unexpected. My parents have two little Papillons (translate super high strung, pups). When my mom let them outside one evening, they wouldn’t come back inside and kept barking at the pear tree. When Mama finally went to investigate, look what she discovered, an opossum!

There’s nothing rare about these creatures, but she was surprised to find one in the pear tree. She was so surprised that she snapped a picture.

When you think about it, life is often like that. Things happen to us all of the time that we aren’t expecting. The big question we have to ask ourselves is how we deal with them. That depends largely on how we look at life.

If we try to control everything around us by constantly planning every moment and holding on tightly with a white knuckled grip, we are likely to be very stressed most of the time. From the amount of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications floating around out there, I suspect that a large portion of our population survives in that way.

At some point though, we have to ask ourselves, are we content to just survive or is there something more? Is the holding on tightly and worrying about everything good enough?

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite philosophers, Mr. Jimmy Buffet, has the line, “If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all this living, is that it wouldn’t change a thing if I let go.” Wise words to be sure.

I think one of the most difficult things to do as humans is to admit we are not in control and it’s probably even harder in the Western World. We get to control so much here, where we go to school, where we live, what career we want, who our spouses are, who our leaders are. We are big on choice and that’s a good thing, but it also gives us a false sense of our place in the universe.

All of the choices we have are a blessing, but they are also a weight we carry. It becomes very difficult to focus on the God who made us and who we are supposed to serve as we make so many choices to control everything around us. We don’t like surprises and walking with God is a path full of them.

When we depend on Him and not ourselves, things rarely turn out like we think they will or just like we planned. They turn out better because we are fulfilling His plan for us. The peace that we so desire that we can’t get from the pharmaceutical industry comes from letting go and letting God. It comes from placing all of our worries and our need to control at the foot of the cross. It comes from knowing that He has a plan and that it’s good and that we are loved unconditionally.

If we truly believe all of that, what more can we possibly need? What do you think about our obsessive need to control? I’d love to hear from you.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂