Losing Control

Losing Control

I stood over my bed smoothing out the 1000 thread count sheets I bought for almost nothing on Black Friday of the year before. As I turned the blankets and angled them just right, my thoughts drifted to the book I was reading during my morning quiet time. I thought about the words of a woman that was sharing her deepest pain and how that one event had shaped so much of her life. As I pulled the red comforter up and tugged it into place, fixing the mangled mess my husband, two cats, and I had left from the night’s sleep, I thought of the moment in time when my own life changed. That painful moment when memories stopped and childhood was erased. Instead of being taken back to the moment I heard my dad say, “She’s gone”, I was transported back to the few times over the last 23 years that I’ve come in contact with someone from that part of my life. A CNA named Stephanie or the man that bought the house my dad was forced to sell because a single income would not support the mortgage or the bills. Those moments were my fragile moments as I was transformed into a young girl that had lost her mother, no….not just her mother, but that lost control. CONTROL! Was that it….was that the word? No, that couldn’t be right. I always felt like a little, lost, crying, unstable girl that had lost her mother, but was that all. The realization of the epiphany I was having 23 years after the most painful time of my life was hitting and the bed was still not made as pillows lay tossed in the center and I reached for my journal.

When my mother died, I sought, without knowing, to stop being that girl. A little girl that lost her mother and could not control the outcome. As I grow older, I see my inability to be spontaneous and the smallest deviation from my plan can send me into a sea of raging anger. I become unglued when we plan a vacation and we or I plan to leave at 9 and we don’t leave until 10. More recently I get angry with my husband when work makes him work late, which is often, or when traffic delays him further. Leave on time, why don’t you leave when your 8 hours are up. That is the plan. That is how it works.

To say, my mother’s death did not affect everyone involved would be incorrect. We were all affected in different ways and I honestly believed that shortly after I accepted Christ, that I had dealt with her death and I was okay. Until this morning, that is,  when I realized that my need to control a situation is rooted in the very pain I long sense thought healed. Not the pain of missing my mother or wishing she had been here to meet my children, but the pain …..just the impossible pain that you experience when you lose a loved one…….

I watched as my mother lay in a hospital bed that was in her bedroom, wasting away to nothing. My family was split as my mother’s family wanted one thing and my dad and his family wanted something else. Horrible words were spoken and as the oldest, I witnessed. I had no control. On my 19^th birthday I got a call telling me my Father had a heart attack.  No control.  The night, my mother died, I listened as she breathed twice…..paused…..gasp for air, repeat…for hours, with no control. The next morning, I was told she was gone, and I heard foot steps leading to my younger siblings…..and I cried, with no control. I listened as my Aunt screamed, when I told her that her sister was gone and told me I was lying and hung up. I answered the phone again, and listened as a CNA called to check on Ms. Brenda and listened as she cried when I told her. LaRita was her name, she cried, and I had no control. I stood in a line that I don’t remember and watched as the three young children were sighed over as well-meaning friends and family cried harder as they thought of how young we were to lose our mother. I stood and watched as my baby sister had to be drugged away from the grave, screaming, “she’s afraid of the dark…..she’s afraid of the dark” and I could not fix it. No control. I packed up my belongings and moved out of my pink bedroom with a view of the pool in the back yard and moved into a tiny rented home, where I shared a room with my sister. I sat and held my 12 year old brother as he lay sobbing, thinking he had disappointed our mother before she died. I could not control his sadness, nor mine. So, one day I stood alone in the tiny rental house and I screamed at God in heaven, that I would never step foot in his church again. Control. This, I could control. Finally, something I could control. For the next few years, I took control of my life. I lived it with no rules and no care of anyone, including myself.

Why, 16 years after accepting Christ, did I have this epiphany, while making my bed? Why now? Why not, for example, while at the altar, during my first months as a new Follower of Christ? Maybe the things I have been through, recently, have prepared me. I just came out of three years in a job I hated, with which I lost complete control and had to depend completely on God, as my mental health failed me. I am still walking through a hurricane as I impatiently wait for God to restore my family and  my mind is constantly roaming to solutions and wishing God Almighty would allow me to take back control. I would say that now, is a good time to teach me this lesson.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving

let your request be made known to God.

Philippians 4:6

To completely understand this scripture, I needed to understand the definition of two words.

Supplication: the action of asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly.

Thanksgiving: the expression of gratitude, especially to God.

To let go of worry, stress, anxiety, control, we must first trust God. To say that I trust God is easy. I do in most things. However, I don’t like it, when He takes control away from me. When I can no longer see the outcome or control the situation I am in. When I found out that my job was coming to an end, I trusted God. When I was offered a job that was a demotion and paid $12,000 a year less, I trusted God. When I started to be unhappy with my job and began looking for the perfect job, I trusted that God would find it for me, but I didn’t like that He got to control the timing. In other words, when I prayed, I did not come to his earnestly believing that He had already found the perfect job , nor was I humble during my period of wait and I certainly was not thankful that God was waiting for the right job and not just putting me in a job.

I honestly don’t know where this epiphany is going to take me. I don’t know if I will loosen up and stop trying to control everything. I do hope that I am able to release my need to control. I think I am still shocked that 23 years ago a young girl of 19, lost control of everything she knew to be her world, and unconsciously started a journey of control. It didn’t happen overnight. I don’t know when it got so bad that I can’t get up in the morning a just drive to where ever the road takes me without planning it out. I do know when it started. Unconsciously, I made the decision that I never wanted to lose that much control of my life, again. It was a painful time and to this day, pieces of my life are gone, because I have blocked out so much. As God heals me, my prayer is that some of those pieces will come back to me.

When will your epiphany happen and what is it? What is it in your life that keeps you from being completely happy? What controls you? For me, the need to control every situation, controls my happiness. My prayer for you is that you will allow God to reveal to you, the way He has revealed to me.

Father, I am thankful for revelations over an unmade bed. I pray for all of those reading or not reading this that they are able to pray with supplication and thanksgiving to you. Let their request be made earnestly before the creator of the world. Amen