I was listening to the Pirate Monk podcast today with special guest John Eldredge. There were many things discussed that struck a nerve with me, but in lieu of writing about them all, one statement hit me hardest. John said, ”You either choose control or freedom. But you can’t have both…”
Being a habitual control freak for most of my life, this statement really made me dive deep into the foundations of my control issues. I’ve worked very hard to untangle my control issues and discovered that the first few layers of this compulsive behavior had been built on fear. In my sick, addiction brain, I thought I could control the world around me. Control the harm that effected my loved ones, and do damage control regarding Murphy’s Law of: “if anything can go wrong it probably will…”.
Fear of someone seeing me unable to be completely self-sufficient, fear of not being enough, and the biggest one that caused the most damage in my life… fear of abandonment. Obsessing over control lies to us, telling us (mostly on a subconscious level) that we can save ourselves from the pain of this world if we can just control everything and everyone around us. My hardest test within my day-to-day life was allowing my kids to make poor choices. I always desired to step in and control the situation in order to save them from their own free will. Whilst reflecting on that, I often wonder how hard this same hands-off approach must be on our loving Heavenly Father as he to sits back and watches us do the same. But that’s a different discussion.
At times, codependency is riding shot gun with control. Control - who's driving the car at 130mph while both of them are screaming and yelling like mindless idiots, heading straight for a 10ft thick brick wall. That brick wall is absolute destruction relative to any hope of peace and harmony within our lives. From there, then chaos may very well creep into the control freak's life by whispering lies of impending doom. For decades, I could never realize why I had no peace and harmony in my life. No matter how hard I tried, I always felt like total calamity was just around the corner. I still fight this sense of eminent failure, particularly as it relates to my career. I have layers of redundancy built into everything I do because of this. I spend sleepless nights playing out the next day's events over and over in my head trying to find a crack in the wall or any minute detail that I may have overlooked. It’s exhausting and brings about mountains of stress. I’ve had to learn to do my due diligence and then let it go. This whole process of control that I'm in bondage to is insanity that I can never find peace with, and it's all due to me acting out these control behaviors.
But there are times when I’m able to draw boundaries and simply breathe. This is when freedom arrives, and I’m able to have peace again. I’ve had to learn to be okay with watching my loved ones fail. This is very hard! But what I’ve come to realize is that it’s only through those failures that they can truly grow and learn the lessons life has to teach. So, I’m actually doing them a disservice by trying to control everything all the time. Failure is a part of life, and the sooner we get comfortable with allowing others to discover God's purpose inside their problems, the sooner they will mature into the strong, adjusted people we had hoped for all along.
For years, I couldn’t figure out why my loved ones weren't hearing my words of direction in an attempt to correct their trajectory. Eventually I realized it’s because you can endlessly tell a person to not put their hand on a hot stove before seeing them choose to do it anyway. As a result, the burn they receive on their hand teaches them far more deeply than my words ever could have. Letting go of the desire to police everyone’s life is like mana from heaven. It opens up our hearts to receive great wisdom. Letting go and letting God, delivers the freedom and harmony that control promises but never seems to deliver on. John Eldredge talked about praying this one simple prayer - “Lord, I give everything and everybody to you…” He does this repeatedly, letting go of the stress and anxiety. I think I’m going to start giving that one a test drive in my own prayer life today.
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