Do you think of yourself being in control of your life? Does the need to control all the details, plans, and activities of yourself and others drain your energy?

Welcome to the human condition.

My recent years have forced me to re-evaluate my perception that I’m in control of my life.
Like many of you, I’ve been hit hard with multiple deaths of family members. I’ve learned the unendingness of being a caregiver to someone with a debilitating illness. I’ve had to stand back and watch others take on roles that I had carefully crafted for myself. I’ve also been taught that trying to control another’s behaviors and thinking is both impossible and unhealthy.

Complete control is compelling, illusional, and absolutely unobtainable. Inner anxieties speak loudly within us. We seek stability and predictability; instead, we get pummeled with cruel uncertainty. Some things are within our control. But we fight accepting this stark fact: most things are not.

Thus we can and do react to loss of control with emotional responses of grievers. We are initially numbed with shock, then get angry. We deny the painful implications, seek to bargain a solution, rail against the unfairness, become sad and depressed. Slowly, with plodding steps, we begin to reconcile the loss (or losses) with a new perspective, and a new identity. We learn that, as Stephen Levine says, letting go is letting be.

Deeper thinkers than me call these liminal periods, the “in-between” times when life events jar us. We then know we are in a period of transition, a transition that we did not seek. Instead, change was forced upon us. And having huge changes forced upon us hurts. It taps into our deepest insecurities.

Faith journeying is itself a liminal event. Jesus’ invitation to “come unto me all who are weary” is nothing less than a call to trust another power not my own. Surrendering to God's welcoming arms is an ongoing process. Faith is submitting, albeit reluctantly, to an unseeable but all-too-real Entity. A loving Entity who enters into the painful sorting process with us.

Are we in control? The answer is yes and no.

We do have a say in our lives. We can be extremists who only identify ourselves as helpless victims - not responsible for any of our actions and perceptions. Or we can be pie-in-the-sky romantics who gleefully claim that every detail of our lives is part of a wonderful plan of God, a plan we simply accept as totally beneficent.

I suppose I’m finding strength and hope in the middle of those two extremes. Yes, I am a victim of circumstances, but I also have inner resources I didn’t know existed until now. Yes, I believe in a God of ultimate love, but I also have been equipped to be more than robotically happy.

I know the depths, the marvelous side of life because I know the pain of losing irreplaceable people. The scales of despair on my eyes do fall off. In those serendipitous moments, God’s abundance becomes reality.

And that beats me being in full control anytime.

—Virgil Fry

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