Today I had one of the biggest, and quite humbly, epiphany's of my life: what if God has allowed me to go through so much to show me that He is worthy of my trust and that I can just let go? However to me, not only is this extremely difficult, I'm feeling like it may be impossible.
I'm an organized control freak. This is an aspect of my life that I've ignored about myself for the good part of my life, and an aspect that has become so out of control, that it is completing reshaping who I am. In the past few weeks, God has been revealing this rather now annoying character quality about myself to me.
My life has been so chaotic that I've needed to become a control freak so that my life does not fall apart. When I was little, the adults talked about how I was "never just a kid" and "always independent". Seriously, from the time I was 5, I was obsessed with making money. Not making money to be rich, but making money so that I wouldn't need to depend upon other people to buy me things. Throughout my childhood I had a variety of short lived business schemes so that I could always have cash in the box beneath my bed, just in case.
During my later childhood until I was about 16, my control freak tendencies about providing for myself subsided and I became obsessed, literally obsessed, with planning. From the time I was 8 I was researching colleges, pulling up their academic catalogs and planning my 4 year plan at that institution. At 8! 8! I began looking at houses where I wanted to live and plugging the value of the home into mortgage calculators to figure out how much my mortgage would be, thus, what kind of income I would need to achieve this goal.
In many ways, these planned out dreams became my fuel for success. I wanted nothing more than to not be my parents. And, as a little kid, the way to be most opposite of them was to have a solid career, a big house and a nice chunk of change in the bank. I was convinced that the reason they did not achieve these things was because they did not plan. Therefore, not only did I have to plan, I had to plan perfectly. I convinced myself that if I didn't plan one single thing, I risked turning into my parents.
This control freak nature, I'm learning, has echoed into my relationship with God. I feel like I can't control God. How awful is that?!? I feel like I can't trust the Creator of the Universe.
I first began to see this when I was 17. January 2011 was one of the most difficult turning points of my life, I feel like I lost everything. I became super sick and I was unable to play sports anymore. My Grandpa, the best man in my life, my father figure and my provider, died unexpectedly. I grew up never having to work for anything, having everything handed to me on a silver platter, and now my Grandma and I were wondering how we were gonna pay pills. I was angry, I was frustrated. I saw our despair as a result of poor planning. Sure, I turned to God. But if I was totally honest, it was with the attitude, "YOU made this mess happen, now YOU fix it!"
The seldom areas of my life that I wasn't controlling over, I was after that winter. God could not be trusted with my life. Sure, I prayed to Him, thanked Him and asked Him for things, but that was it. I still felt like God wasn't providing. Surely, I thought, if YOU put me through THAT much hurt, You will shower me with blessings. Nope, didn't happen. Looking back I now realized that being a control weak also made me very selfish.
Then, something crazy happened: I fell in love. For the first time, ever, I trusted someone. I trusted him with my secrets, my affection, and gave them the freedom to plan stuff. If you know me you know how this worked out: it didn't.
I was crushed. I'd planned my life with and around this guy. Once again, my lack of being in control, of trusting him and God, caused me to get hurt. This was the icing on the cake to an extremely difficult semester, which didn't make the situation any easier.
Once again, I turned to God. Although, this time I gave more of a surrender. I was so broken that I told Him He could have my life, and do with it as He pleased. As a result, God did some crazy things. He lead me to change my major and start a ministry, and has greatly blessed both of them.
But this year, I've slowly slipped back into my controlling patterns. This year, God has blessed me with the greatest friends I have ever had, or could ever hope for. They are dependable, loving, and love me for me, even with all of my junk. They are answers to many nights of prayer. Although I'm very grateful for my close girl friends, my guy friends are making an impactful difference in my life, and have revealed my control issues.
My guy friends, have gone above and beyond to show that they are worthy of my trust. However, part of me still feels like *I* have to be in control. If I don't invite them to hangout weekly, or if I don't seek them out (aka be in control of our friendship) then I believe they will leave. However, I then get mad when they don't seek me out. How messed up is that? Perfect example: My Birthday and Valentine's Day.
My birthday is an important day for me. Being affirmed and shown that I'm valued, although I'm embarrassed to admit it, I need to be affirmed (don't worry, this is something that I'm working on). Throughout the semester, I plan birthday parties for my friends and I dropped hints about how much I loved birthdays, secretly hoping that someone would hear me and would plan ME a birthday party. Well, when my birthday did roll around, I assumed no one had heard me and began planning my own party. Only to discover that my friends HAD been planning me a surprise party. It was an awful feeling to realize that these people are worthy of my trust and yet I don't trust them.
Then, Valentine's Day, aka the biggest humble pie moment of my life, happened. I became super nervous that I wouldn't get any cards. So, what did I do? Began planning. One of my good guy friends and I agreed to get each other a Valentine's card. When Valentine's Day arrived and rolled around and there were no cards and my mailbox, I began to panic. Of course he didn't get me a card, I thought, of course! So, I began asking him about it, which he got offended and said, "Don't you trust me?" I said yes, but deep down was screaming no, assuming that he just didn't me one. Well, I was wrong, I was very wrong. When I went back to my room, there was a huge card sitting on my bed. Not only did it take him hours to design, there were also very kind notes, some which moved me to tears, written by over a dozen of my friends.
So, here I was, planning everything, believing that no one would get me anything.Yet, if my plans had gone the way I wanted, I would have missed out on this huge surprise blessing.
Throughout this semester, God's been showing me that I just need to stop planning, and my friends are showing me this as well. In chapel this week, we talked about the problems with being a control freak. In one of my classes this week, we also talked about being a control freak. My friends, have talked to me about my planning/control freak tendencies. And, yesterday (when I began writing this) I realized that I am a control freak because I'm scared.
There's something going on in my life right now that I can't control. It's driving me nuts, because it has the potential to impact the rest of my life an I can't control it. I'm having to fully trust God and not plan. This is wonderfully terrifying. It's freeing, yet I'm scared because I'm waiting for everything to fall apart due to my lack of planning.
But: what if everything does fall apart? Hasn't God put back the broken pieces of my life over and over again and in the process formed a beautiful mosaic?
God, is worthy of my trust. He knows what He is doing. And, as I'm slowly realizing and releasing my control freak tendencies, these verses keep coming to mind:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths"~Proverbs 5-6
"Just as you cannot understand the paths of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing inside its mother's womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things" Ecclesiastes 11:5
