So I could tell you about all of the events that have happened over the last couple of weeks in addition to the ones I wrote about yesterday, but honestly I’m starting to think people wouldn’t even believe me. It’s simply just one thing after another, and today was most certainly no exception.
And all of this is really starting to wear down my walls and my defenses and my sanity, tentative as it is.
See the thing is that I have this very deep need for control. In many ways I associate control with morality. To be in control of everything means you are good. To be out of control means you are bad. It sounds weird when I write it out like that, but something tells me there are many other people out there who hold the same premises to be true.
Anyway, because of these beliefs, when I’m out of control, which I very much am at this moment, I feel as if something is wrong. I start to think I am doing things wrong, and I start fighting back. I start screaming in my head about how things should be which is just a more polite way of saying, “you are such a mess up and look at everything you are screwing up!” I’ll sit there, mentally screaming “should should should SHOULD!!!” And it gets me stuck. As shoulds usually do.
But then I had an experience a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned yesterday, we found out at the very last minute that we were selling our house which meant we had very little time to find a new place. The sane part of me said that we just had to go find a rental place. The crazy (slightly larger) part of me kept telling me that we would be homeless and we would never find a place and my children would grow up having a minivan as a living room and their car seats as beds and they would have to bathe in wash bins behind the van and… well you get the picture.
And we had to wait a few days. Going through the whole process of renting a house takes a few days which we really didn’t have, and I kind of went into a tailspin.
But then I asked myself one simple question, “what would God have me do?” And time and time again when I asked myself this question, the answer became simple. Just accept what I cannot change (the uncertainty) and stop spending all my energy fighting against it. After all, worrying and obsessing doesn’t actually change the outcome no matter how moral and right and just worrying feels.
Instead focus on the things that I can control, the things things that are in front of me. When I’m driving, I can get my kids safely to their destination. When I am at home, I can play with them and read with them and cuddle them. Right now I can pack things up and organize things, and make sure that the kids don’t feel like they are getting lost in the chaos.
I think most of us have these grand delusions of control. We believe we can control our situations and our outcomes and our destinies and, well, everything. That belief is comforting – it makes us feel secure. But the more and more I go on, the more I start to realize that all we can control is our input. We can control what we do, how we interact with people, and the quality of the work we do. But in so very many situations we simply cannot control the outcome.
And so I sit here. And I really desperately want to throw in the towel. I want to declare defeat to this crazy conglomerate of circumstances. But I won’t. Instead, I will submit this post, and then I will make dinner for my kids, and then I will go upstairs and I will pack up the rest of the toys and the clothes.
And I will just soldier on.
Because I really and truly have come to believe that when our lives are over, we won’t be judged on our outcomes. All we will be asked is what we submitted. What we have done. What we put in.
And no matter how trying the circumstances, I want to be able to say that I never gave in. I never gave up. I soldiered on.
Wanna follow me on Facebook?