Control Issues

I think the next two posts may very well go hand in hand, although they will deal with different topics. That’s all I’m gonna say about it now, to bait you to keep reading…heh heh…

It takes awhile sometimes for God to get through to me, but in looking at a series of events that have unfolded in my life over the past several months, I see a common thread: all of them seem to be exposing my control issues. I am an admitted control freak, and have even referenced it multiple times tongue-in-cheekly on this here blog. But I suppose it’s now time not just to admit it, but to deal with it.

I won’t go into too much detail about the specific events, but what I can say is that taken together, they are letting me know how NOT in control I actually am, that my feelings of being in control are largely an illusion. This makes me feel vulnerable, frail. The thing is, for nearly as long as I can remember, it seems I have been on a personal quest–nay, a self-imposed mandate–in my life to accomplish the impossible. I feel inordinately responsible for circumstances I couldn’t possibly control, and I feel to blame if they do not work out the way I want them to. This makes it second nature for me to try and micro-manage everything (and everyone) around me. I’ve made some strides in overcoming this over the years, but the compulsion is still there–and when the pressure comes, it is still my fallback position.

Not to get too deep into the inner-healing thing, but I think I’ve figured out that this goes back as far as the womb with me. I was conceived in an already troubled marriage, and my parents hoped that my arrival would heal the rift between them. Kids pick up more than we think, even in the womb. So basically as a fetus, the first task I was charged with was to save a marriage–an expectation I ultimately failed to live up to, because, you know, a baby couldn’t possibly do something like that. I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, but I think I did feel responsible somehow, because it seems like from that point on, I felt inordinately responsible for my mom, and ultimately responsible for the happiness of everyone around me. This got complicated further when I began feeling the effects of loss from an absent father, the trauma of being uprooted from all things familiar during a major move at age 5, being bullied in school, and other circumstances that made me feel very out of control of my own life. I think somewhere along the way I just made a decision that the best way to live was to try and control everything around me (or at least to FEEL like I was in control), so I wouldn’t suffer for someone else’s choices, and so I could at least minimize the blame if things went wrong. I think this mentality has effected how I’ve approached nearly everything in my life, from my perfectionism to how I’ve done my job. (I certainly micromanaged people as a pastor, and that never went well.)

Control freaks are not very happy people. I wasn’t a happy person; I was a driven person. This was because my happiness was pinned on my feelings of control, and of course we can’t control everything. The best we can hope for is to feel in control, and that causes us to grasp for different ways to feel that, even at the expense of others.

But in the end, it’s all an illusion. When we try to juggle too many balls, eventually they will all fall to the ground; deep inside we know this, and it fills us with dread. So even when we are in a place where we feel we have everything managed, there is this fear that something is going to come along and throw off our groove, and it’s all going to fall apart. Illusion of control smashed. The life of a control freak.

That’s just no way to live.

I appear to be in one of those seasons where circumstances I thought I had managed are showing themselves to be out of my control, and I’m having to grapple with that idea. My first impulse is to stress out, to the point that I’ve actually been feeling the effects of that in my physical body at times. But even though I’m not cured yet of my control issues, at least somehow over the years it seems I’ve become self-aware enough to know that this is taking away from my quality of life. One of the key reasons why my family and I moved to this new place was to live life in a greater capacity. The compulsion to control is putting a cap on my ability to live in the moment or to embrace life fully.

Control freaks are not happy people. I want to be happy. So I must learn to pin my sense of contentment on something other than the illusion of control. I have to find a way to enjoy my life in the midst of uncertainty. There has to be another reason to take joy in the moment than the illusion that everything is going “my way.”

So now comes the point when I should conclude that God is in control. I do believe that, but I’m going to try and avoid the cliche behind it. Sometimes we use that line to our disadvantage because our theology sometimes presents us with the illusion that we can control God with our faith, and that God will always make it work out the way we want it to if we just believe hard enough. Again, an illusion. We don’t see the big picture, and we can’t box God in by our theology.

That being said–when you boil it down, control issues equate to trust issues. At least, this is how it is in my case. I feel the need to control everything because I mistakenly believe no one else can do it like I can do it, including God. I feel the need to control because I do not trust someone else with that responsibility. Yes, I believe (at least mentally) that God is in control, but that doesn’t automatically make me relinquish my handhold on things. In times past, God had to almost physically pry my fingers off of whatever it was I was trying to hold onto. And each time that has happened, things ultimately worked out for the better–better than they would have under my control.

So that’s the lesson I’m trying to take into this season, as I become aware of the uncertainties around me and my inability to control the outcomes. I’m trying to recognize that control issues are trust issues, and that control issues breed fear. And fear ultimately paralyzes us inside, robbing us of our quality of life. I’m also reminding myself, not just that God is in control, but that I can entrust myself, my circumstances, my family and my very life to Him. And I can find happiness, joy and contentment in that place, even if I’m not in control.

It’s not my job to control everything. In other words, God is calling for my resignation.

More on this soon…