I've recently discovered that the world of Facebook is not big enough for everything I have to say. I can only update my status so many times per day. I guess I should start with the back story of my life just to catch you up. So, I was born on December 26, 1978.....just kidding. Would never want to bore you with the entire story all at once.
As far as the title of my blog, that did start about the time I was born. My mother said I was the child that always wanted things a certain way and didn't want my clothes to be dirty, and please do not mention the possibility of dirty hands to me. DRAMA would ensue! In other words, no, I did not just wake up one day and decide....hmmmm...I think I'll be a control freak. It's been going on for a really long time.
I grew up not knowing that it wasn't every little girl's dream to run the world. I was completely oblivious to the fact that not everyone in the universe would not welcome my opinion. My father always did. We used to have the best, ummmm....we'll call them discussions with variable volume levels. Long before I was old enough to vote, I had definite views on politics and they were inevitably the direct opposite of my father's (please don't ask him about the 1st Clinton election...this is still a source of deep embarassment for me). Not that those were my actual opinions, but I would defend them to the death. Which taught me that if I could just talk long enough, eventually the other person would see my side. Brilliant, right? Turns out, most people don't have the attention span to endure my endless diatribes.
How does this relate to the rest of my life, you ask? I'm so glad you did! Fast forward to age 24. I've been on my own since I was 17. Sure, I've moved back home a few times, but who hasn't? I've always had jobs where I felt I was in control of something. I might not necessarily be the boss, but I am the person that other people call when they need the impossible done....and I usually find a way to make it happen. I was walking through life kicking butt and taking names and everyone knew it. Then one day, I find myself sitting in a hospital room with my mother. Somehow, I couldn't control this one. She lay there so pale, so bloated and swollen. The machines were humming in the background like a million mosquitoes, an angry reminder that I could do nothing to change the situation. And in the blink of an eye she was gone. I tried but was powerless to stop it. All the things that I KNEW to be true, suddenly weren't. I was not in control like I thought I was. God didn't heal my mother the way I thought He would. What was the world coming to.....and I crashed into the wall of reality.
Fast forward again to age 26. I've managed to tape pieces of my life back together. You have to look really, really closely to see the invisible tape. But you would never get that close....I make sure of that. I've learned from my mistakes. Never let people get too close because that's when you get hurt. Somehow even with that philosophy, I managed to get married. Very odd and not quite sure how that happened. I just knew that I met this amazing person who was the exact opposite of me. He was fun and carefree, whereas I was boring and grounded. My logical mind dictated that this would yield balance.
Somewhere along the way, I had not learned the lesson that states that logic has no place in matters of the heart. In my mind, logic determined the outcome of everything.
Life was an equation and if you had the proper knowledge, it could be solved. Very precise, no mess, no fuss....there's a formula for anything, right? Wrong. This poor man who had chosen to walk through life next to me had no idea what I was talking about when I tried, so desperately, to explain this to him. For one thing, there were too many shiny objects in the room for him to actually hear what I was saying. I'm fairly certain what he heard was similar to the voices of the grown ups in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Things went on for a few years and got increasingly more difficult. Was I a source of vexation to him? Most definitely. Did I deserve the reaction I usually got? Most definitely not. You see, where I had grown up with an over-inflated sense of order in the world, he had grown up with practically no boundaries at all and felt it appropriate to say anything that popped into his head. I, on the other hand, had a complete staff of full time editors working round the clock in my head, censoring every thought to ensure that anything I expressed was nothing if not appropriate. Well, except for the sarcasm. That was my little rebellion. He had no such staff in his head. I'll skip the details....that's for another day.
Suddenly (why is it that things always seem to happen to me suddenly? is it because I'm not looking? not sure...but I digress), I find myself sitting in an empty house at the age of 29. The man I had committed to for the rest of my life was not coming home. For the past 3 1/2 years I had cooked (well enough for him to gain 30+ lbs) and cleaned and ironed and taken care of him and raised his daughter, and, yet, there I was alone.
Everything I had done wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. And I was utterly and completely, heart-wrenchingly alone. I just KNEW that if I took good care of him and made him need me, that he wouldn't leave me because he couldn't live without me. See, that's how a person with low self esteem thinks. You've been there, haven't you? You just decide that they may not like you, but you will make yourself irreplaceable and then you will never, ever be alone again.
This theory may work in an OCD world, but that's not the world I was living in. And so he left and I found myself not in control of the situation - again - and God didn't stop it from happening - again. With so many emotions, I didn't know where to start. Anger? No, that's too easy. Anyone can be angry. Denial? Oh, that would have been bliss. Let's just dive right into the pool of self loathing and incrimination, because it IS my fault, you know. I'm the wife and it was my job to protect my marriage and my home and I failed. I was a failure. That's the logical answer. But, oh, it wasn't the answer at all.
Thank goodness, it wasn't the answer! There's only so much a lioness can do to protect her pride, but if the lion walks away, what is there to protect? That was his choice, not hers. She can't control him anymore than she can control the weather.
When I finally accepted that I was never in control of things in the first place, what a burden lifted! It wasn't my responsibility to control him.....I couldn't control him. As I began to realize that, I gave the control back to God (ironic since He already had it....isn't it weird how we always think we are giving Him something when He has it already?). I finally went to Him and said, "Father, here are the pieces. I'm broken again and I can't fix it. Will you help me?" I didn't want to ask for help because I would much rather do it myself. I knew I didn't deserve help because I had wandered so far, far away from home and I was, after all, a failure. But just like that prodigal son, so many years ago, when I came and fell at His feet and gave it to Him, He picked me up and welcomed me home just as if nothing had ever happened and I had always been right there where I belonged.
If you're still reading, you must be in the same boat that I am. No one else would have stayed with this story line this long. I know that I'm not making this journey alone. There have to be others out there who feel the same shame and embarrassment for choices you didn't make, for things you couldn't control. And yet, we feel responsible and ashamed that things didn't go the way we expected. Don't lose hope! There's more to my story and there's more to yours, too. Just make sure you have the right One writing it.
As far as the title of my blog, that did start about the time I was born. My mother said I was the child that always wanted things a certain way and didn't want my clothes to be dirty, and please do not mention the possibility of dirty hands to me. DRAMA would ensue! In other words, no, I did not just wake up one day and decide....hmmmm...I think I'll be a control freak. It's been going on for a really long time.
I grew up not knowing that it wasn't every little girl's dream to run the world. I was completely oblivious to the fact that not everyone in the universe would not welcome my opinion. My father always did. We used to have the best, ummmm....we'll call them discussions with variable volume levels. Long before I was old enough to vote, I had definite views on politics and they were inevitably the direct opposite of my father's (please don't ask him about the 1st Clinton election...this is still a source of deep embarassment for me). Not that those were my actual opinions, but I would defend them to the death. Which taught me that if I could just talk long enough, eventually the other person would see my side. Brilliant, right? Turns out, most people don't have the attention span to endure my endless diatribes.
How does this relate to the rest of my life, you ask? I'm so glad you did! Fast forward to age 24. I've been on my own since I was 17. Sure, I've moved back home a few times, but who hasn't? I've always had jobs where I felt I was in control of something. I might not necessarily be the boss, but I am the person that other people call when they need the impossible done....and I usually find a way to make it happen. I was walking through life kicking butt and taking names and everyone knew it. Then one day, I find myself sitting in a hospital room with my mother. Somehow, I couldn't control this one. She lay there so pale, so bloated and swollen. The machines were humming in the background like a million mosquitoes, an angry reminder that I could do nothing to change the situation. And in the blink of an eye she was gone. I tried but was powerless to stop it. All the things that I KNEW to be true, suddenly weren't. I was not in control like I thought I was. God didn't heal my mother the way I thought He would. What was the world coming to.....and I crashed into the wall of reality.
Fast forward again to age 26. I've managed to tape pieces of my life back together. You have to look really, really closely to see the invisible tape. But you would never get that close....I make sure of that. I've learned from my mistakes. Never let people get too close because that's when you get hurt. Somehow even with that philosophy, I managed to get married. Very odd and not quite sure how that happened. I just knew that I met this amazing person who was the exact opposite of me. He was fun and carefree, whereas I was boring and grounded. My logical mind dictated that this would yield balance.
Somewhere along the way, I had not learned the lesson that states that logic has no place in matters of the heart. In my mind, logic determined the outcome of everything.
Life was an equation and if you had the proper knowledge, it could be solved. Very precise, no mess, no fuss....there's a formula for anything, right? Wrong. This poor man who had chosen to walk through life next to me had no idea what I was talking about when I tried, so desperately, to explain this to him. For one thing, there were too many shiny objects in the room for him to actually hear what I was saying. I'm fairly certain what he heard was similar to the voices of the grown ups in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Things went on for a few years and got increasingly more difficult. Was I a source of vexation to him? Most definitely. Did I deserve the reaction I usually got? Most definitely not. You see, where I had grown up with an over-inflated sense of order in the world, he had grown up with practically no boundaries at all and felt it appropriate to say anything that popped into his head. I, on the other hand, had a complete staff of full time editors working round the clock in my head, censoring every thought to ensure that anything I expressed was nothing if not appropriate. Well, except for the sarcasm. That was my little rebellion. He had no such staff in his head. I'll skip the details....that's for another day.
Suddenly (why is it that things always seem to happen to me suddenly? is it because I'm not looking? not sure...but I digress), I find myself sitting in an empty house at the age of 29. The man I had committed to for the rest of my life was not coming home. For the past 3 1/2 years I had cooked (well enough for him to gain 30+ lbs) and cleaned and ironed and taken care of him and raised his daughter, and, yet, there I was alone.
Everything I had done wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. And I was utterly and completely, heart-wrenchingly alone. I just KNEW that if I took good care of him and made him need me, that he wouldn't leave me because he couldn't live without me. See, that's how a person with low self esteem thinks. You've been there, haven't you? You just decide that they may not like you, but you will make yourself irreplaceable and then you will never, ever be alone again.
This theory may work in an OCD world, but that's not the world I was living in. And so he left and I found myself not in control of the situation - again - and God didn't stop it from happening - again. With so many emotions, I didn't know where to start. Anger? No, that's too easy. Anyone can be angry. Denial? Oh, that would have been bliss. Let's just dive right into the pool of self loathing and incrimination, because it IS my fault, you know. I'm the wife and it was my job to protect my marriage and my home and I failed. I was a failure. That's the logical answer. But, oh, it wasn't the answer at all.
Thank goodness, it wasn't the answer! There's only so much a lioness can do to protect her pride, but if the lion walks away, what is there to protect? That was his choice, not hers. She can't control him anymore than she can control the weather.
When I finally accepted that I was never in control of things in the first place, what a burden lifted! It wasn't my responsibility to control him.....I couldn't control him. As I began to realize that, I gave the control back to God (ironic since He already had it....isn't it weird how we always think we are giving Him something when He has it already?). I finally went to Him and said, "Father, here are the pieces. I'm broken again and I can't fix it. Will you help me?" I didn't want to ask for help because I would much rather do it myself. I knew I didn't deserve help because I had wandered so far, far away from home and I was, after all, a failure. But just like that prodigal son, so many years ago, when I came and fell at His feet and gave it to Him, He picked me up and welcomed me home just as if nothing had ever happened and I had always been right there where I belonged.
If you're still reading, you must be in the same boat that I am. No one else would have stayed with this story line this long. I know that I'm not making this journey alone. There have to be others out there who feel the same shame and embarrassment for choices you didn't make, for things you couldn't control. And yet, we feel responsible and ashamed that things didn't go the way we expected. Don't lose hope! There's more to my story and there's more to yours, too. Just make sure you have the right One writing it.
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