The Control Illusion

Have you ever had this brooding suspicion that things are about to get shaken up a little in your life just when you think everything's going pretty smooth?  Well, I'm feeling that way now.  I'll fill you in.

So this afternoon as I was almost finished preparing my lesson for our Wednesday night Youth Class on "Losing Control" I was reminded of a discussion that I was involved in about that very thing on Sunday morning.  I thought, "hey that's cool; guess God wants to talk to our youth about control too...we're all on the same page", but didn't give it much thought beyond that.  Fast forward to me sending the notes out to the other teachers on our team and finding out that the lesson I had spent an hour preparing for was indeed, the lesson for next week (when I'm not taking a turn teaching) rather than for tonight.  Nicely done Crystal.  I then proceeded to huff and puff in frustration over the perceived waste of time spent on a lesson that I would not be able to present tonight, and of course, mull over all of the other productive things that I could have been doing in that time.  It wasn't until after I had to recall the notes that I had sent out, that I realized that I had just experienced a practical lesson in "Losing Control".  Now, I'll admit, this was due to my carelessness, however the point stands, that after doing my best to take all of the right steps to prepare, in the end, I still had no control over the results.  I'm sure God was having a good laugh at me at that point as an hour later I had a Facebook notice in my inbox that a friend had posted a picture with the saying, "You can't control everything. Your hair was put on your hair to remind you of that!"  I thought, "seriously God, was that really necessary?"  Anyways, after having a little laugh about the whole afternoon, I'm now left thinking that this whole thing was more-so to remind me about control rather than those around me.

With that being said, I'm taking inventory of the areas in my life where I am in control (or rather I think I am, since we really can't control everything), rather than surrendering those areas to God.  Control is really an illusion; we think that if we can control the events in our life than we will end up with a fairly descent life, free from pain or inconvenience.  (I know we don't really think that way outright...but many times we behave that way)  When really that couldn't be further from the truth.  In reality, the only thing we can control in our lives is the way that we chose to respond to the events that happen.  Sometimes that frustrates me because I think, why wouldn't God choose to let all of the pieces fall nicely into place if we yield to Him.  However God is after something far greater than making our lives comfortable; He wants to make our character strong and able to face anything that life throws our way.  That thought is something to take comfort in when it feels like our world is spinning out of control.  And here's an even greater encouragement; when we place our trust in Christ and surrender to Him, we don't have to face those events, big or small, alone.  To me that makes it all worthwhile, knowing that I can trust an unknown future to an all-knowing and all-loving God.
Till next time friends...take care and lose control! (you know what I mean...hopefully. ;) )

Crystal