Control and Change

Written on February 28, 2014

Have you ever had a timeline? A schedule of when you thought certain things should happen? Well I feel like I have had both of these running in my mind my whole life. When would I go to China? When would I get married? When would I have kids? In my mind I had everything figured out, but I had left something out of the picture- something very important.

I had left God out of all my ‘planning’ and ‘scheduling’. I was doing everything backwards. After all He knew me inside and out, He knew my past, present, and future. Not only that He knows my fears and dreams and ultimately what is best for me. Why haven’t I put Him first before planning my whole life out? Why do I not trust Him and relinquish control of all the thoughts I have swirling around in my head?

Two words- control and change…

I want to be in control of what happens in my life- so I plan, I organize -not always a bad thing, but at the same time it is easy to go overboard in this area. I have been told by multiple people on a variety of occasions that I just need to relax; to chill, not always easy to do with a never ending list running in my head.

Change- although since living in China I have found myself a bit more flexible than my old self I still find it extremely difficult to accept and embrace change- especially when there isn’t time to process through change that is taking place. For example in the past year I have moved to a new apartment, have a new roommate- my husband, moved to a new school building, had a new teaching intern, stepped down as elementary principal- just to name a few. Although many of these changes are good in and of themselves they still come with their share of challenges as well as periods of transition.

So I cling tightly to what I can grab on to and at times wade through the chaos of daily life.

I don’t think I will ever be able to fully step away from my ‘planning’ nature- in many ways this is what makes me who I am- who doesn’t enjoy a well- planned out event?

At the same time I would like to get past the point where I can truly say ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done’ and be okay with sitting back and letting God do His thing. After all can’t I trust Him?

Looking back at my life there were so many things I had planned out in my head that didn’t pan out how I thought they should. Does this mean He didn’t care or that what I wanted was thrown to the wayside? No, I still made it to China, I still got married… just not on my time table… does this mean that He will always give us the things on our timeline- not necessarily, but in the end I know in my heart of hearts we serve a God who loves us. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it. He doesn’t make mistakes, there are no accidents. Many times I think He is just waiting for us to surrender control.