I am sure by now you are tired of hearing about my need to control. I'm tired of it but obviously not tired enough of it to just give it up! Nope, with white knuckled determination I struggle for security. I struggle for the predictable. For safe. Is this a lesson I will ever learn or will this struggle continue to the end? I hope I learn it but I think part of the issue for us all is that God wants our whole hearts so He continues to allow situations where we MUST trust Him. Truthfully, I make myself miserable with worry. I have a friend who really doesn't worry and I just don't understand that. To not worry is so off my radar that I can't even imagine what that would look like. What would I do with myself if I had no time for worry? ; ) What would I worry about if I did not worry? If I don't worry about all this minuscule stuff then who will? See, I am needed! Of course I am being facetious but it is something I think a lot about.
In December I went to the movies with an old friend of Tom's and mine. A guy friend. The guy friend I alluded to in a previous post. We continued to "non=date", as we called it, for the past few months. I went on those earlier "non-dates" because He felt safe. I had a whole list of reasons why I was not ready to "Date" and of why this guy was safe because I would never marry anyone "like him", whatever that meant. Hmmm, I believe I said that once before when Tom Householder asked me to go for coffee. Coffee was not a real date and he was kind of different so I would never be romantically interested yet I ended up marrying him and being married to him for 30 years. Can you see where this is going?
Steve, that's his name, and I dated for a while before I met Tom but we were both headed in different directions in life so we just sort of drifted apart but remained friends. Because we have maintained a friendship he has been in and out of our lives and my family's lives for the past 33 years. He asked me to the movies because he thought I would be a wreck and might need an outing. He saw it as doing me a favor. Too funny. I went because he was a nice guy who felt very safe but it was very weird to be seen in public with another man no matter what the circumstance. We have continued to "non-date" and now we are dating. I know, we called it non-dating but at some point it crossed over into dating I just would not admit it. Maybe God knew this was the only scenario that would feel safe enough for me to venture out there.
All of that to say, my security issues are bubbling to the surface again. I was just beginning to feel secure as a single person but apparently God wants to keep me on my toes. He promised me my future would be better than I could imagine yet I struggle to let Him write the story. So far what He is writing is an amazing and beautiful story that only God could write, but I continue to want answers and control. It is a daily struggle to let it go and rest in this moment and enjoy this page of the book.
I know this much is true. God is good. He only does good things and He delights in cleaning up life's catastrophe's. He will take what the enemy meant for my harm and turn it into something good and He can be trusted. Maybe I should get a tattoo somewhere where I must look at it several times a day as a reminder that:
He can be trusted.
Although I never would've admitted it and couldn't see it until I gave it up, I too was like you describe yourself. I wanted control and felt like if I didn't worry about this and that then who would and certainly bad things would happen and life would ..gasp.. spin out of control the moment I stopped worrying. I spent too many years that way. Then one day God made it easy for me to relinquish control, or rather to stop believing that I had any. He did it using something bad in my life for His good. I think of it this way. When I was little my older sister taught me to float in the pool on my back. It was a feat I could only accomplish by being still. I remember the feeling of letting go, becoming still and the feeling of floating. It took faith and encouragement. But imagine if I had control issues and couldnt' do it on my own, kept moving trying to float and during that effort I suddenly and only momentarily became paralyzed leaving me still, and causing me to float ... same effect but with help. I would have learned that being still was the way. That is how it happened for me that I was able to give up control. I was handed more than I could control. My attempts to control everything seemed to cause me to loose more control until everything fell out of control and in a way I was paralyzed by the lack of control. That is when I saw! Letting go did not stop things from happening but rather seemed to allow them to happen as if executed under an unknown plan. He revealed himself to me in many ways after that release. I learned to trust and now when problems come my way I know I can stand asside and watch them pass by, or give them a little nudge in the right direction, do what He wants me to do with it and then trust. I wish that gift for anyone who needs it, and for you Maryellen. You can do it! He is showing you!
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