False Idol of Control

This week, in my women's bible study, we were challenged to identify the false idols in our lives that were keeping us from an intimate relationship with God.  Upon meditation it became clear my biggest false idol is "Control".

A few years before my oldest son was born, I became the "Controller" of a publicly held company.  When I achieved that title, I remember Chris joking that I had finally gotten the title I deserved.  

Then six years ago my second son was born with a life threatening condition.  Nothing brings you closer to your own helplessness than having a child in such a situation.  Thankfully for us, it also brought us keenly aware that we were not in control but God was and we leaned on him hard.  That was the beginning of God helping me take down the strongholds of "Control" in my life.

Last year through some personal tragedy, God helped me step down from the board I was on and every other position of leadership.  Positions I had kept because of my need to control.  My background thought had been God isn't big enough or doesn't care enough about the small stuff, I must take control.  Wrong!

January 8th of this year, He did something only He could do.  Through unimaginable circumstances, he gave us no choice but to shut down our personal business in a short 24 hour period.

Then for fun He is giving us a baby girl in October.  You may wonder what that has to do with control, but you'd laugh at the things we tried to make sure our oldest was a boy.  We frequently laugh at ourselves now.  Then after three boys, statistically we should have been in the clear for another boy.  Ooops!  Go figure, statistics once again mean nothing in real life.  We were shocked a bit at first but couldn't be more excited now (By the way we have decided on a name "Amber Elizabeth" and we ironically expect her around Chris' birthday).  It's just another example of God's incredible love, and a reminder His plans are always better than our plans.

I realized this week the last big stronghold "Control" has in my life is in how I interact with my children.  I read or was told a while back to ask yourself this question:  "Are you disciplining for disobedience or inconvenience?".  The point being if the latter, you are out of line.  My devotion time this week conveniently covered the topic of manipulation (just another name for control in my book).  I was convicted that I am too often trying to manipulate my children, instead of directing and leading them.  Once again the hidden message is that I don't trust God.  This is going to be a struggle to change but I now understand the change doesn't have to come from more effort by me but more trust by me to let God change me.  Strange sometimes how God offers us an easier way to solve our issues but so often we'd rather just work harder on our own to no avail.

Saturday was a good first step.  Chris and I decided Friday night that if we woke up in time we would take the boys to the beach in the morning.  We did, so we did.  It was a perfect day, slightly overcast and only in the mid 80s.  I got Jared into his wetsuit without a fight, because I worked with him and smiled.  The trend of smiling continued through the day.  We gave them tips on improving their boogie board rides but let them do it their own way when the wanted and more importantly smiled (not frowned) when they did.  My heart is full at how often I found myself smiling and saw my boys smiling today.  We swam, built cone castles, Chris taught them about erosion, we had an awesome time and no corrections were made the whole time.  We even gave in to a rare treat in our house, a stop at Chick-Fil-A on the way home.

I know all days will not be like this.  There will be days I fall back into my controlling routine, or I let them push me there, but now I know what it can be like to be free.  To let God truly be in control for a day and rest is Him and I must say I really liked it.