Why do I do that? Why did I say that? The conversation is going in an uncomfortable direction. So I try to jump in and turn this thing around…make it line up the way Sarah wants the story to go. We’re in a meeting, I have a DEFINITE opinion on how this should turn out, and I’m working every angle I know to make sure that it does. We’re in the car and I’m not driving. But I still want to be calling the shots on what route we take. Yikes! That’s not very a pretty picture!

It’s called control, and even though it looks different on different people, we all try to do it, to one degree or another. We wrestle and wrangle, manipulate and manage. And we thereby think that maybe we can make life work out just a little better, be a little less painful. But who among us has noticed how well it DOESN’T really work? (Can you see my hand raised? Maybe both of them!)

So back to my original question, why do I do that? Why do we do that? The answer? Fear. Plain and simple, we’re scared. And with good reason! You don’t have to grown up in a war zone to collect wounds. We all have them because life can be brutal.

So we guard, and we push, and we attempt to control whatever appears possible to control. We are going to stop the loss. We are going to manage the damage. We are going to force a happy ending…if it kills us! We try our best, through subtle (and sometime not so subtle) tactics to shape our worlds in such a way that we don’t keep getting hurt. I mean, we’re programmed for self-preservation, so we literally can’t help ourselves!

But the irony, of course, is that we’re NOT helping ourselves. In fact, we’re hurting ourselves, and we’re probably hurting those closest to us as well. So how do we learn to control our urge to … control?

In my experience, it’s not possible to start with the fruit; you’ve gotta go to the root. And as I said earlier, it’s all about fear. “But I’m a Christian!” I protest. “I trust God, so I’m not afraid, right?” Well, yes and no. I do trust Him …a bit. I mean, I trust Him in theory. I trust Him in my head. But when it comes right down to it, the plain fact is that it’s hard to trust someone that you don’t actually know very well. Mind you, He knows me — inside and out! But the other way around, well, in the grand scheme of things, I’m just getting started.

So as I have been pondering this question of late, I’m realizing that wherever I’m struggling to trust Him, I think I just need to get to know Him a little better. For instance, when I recently caught myself trying to “orchestrate” life so that someone would like me better, (don’t pretend you haven’t done it, too!) I realized that I knew God loved me, but wasn’t so sure if He liked me.

And maybe, just maybe I could relax about everybody else liking me if I really thought that the God of the universe already did.

So I started searching and found this verse. “He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17b. Yep. Sounds like He likes me! I’ve read this verse before, of course, but reading and pondering it RIGHT when I’m struggling with the issue, well, it’s like applying the medicine to RIGHT where it hurts. It takes it from theory to reality, from head to heart.

So when I notice that I’m trying to control, I’m starting to step back and ask myself the all important question, “What am I so afraid of?” Once I’ve named the fear that is driving me, I can begin to ask the questions that matter most. “What do you have to say about this, God?” is an especially good one! And with each encounter, I find that I know Him just a little bit better. We now have more than theories, we have history together. And the place of shared history is the place where trust is formed.

The more I know you, the more I trust you. The more I trust you, the less I’m afraid. The less afraid I am, the less I find myself grasping for that ugly, ugly thing called control.