As I’ve learned, life is filled with lessons, some welcome, some difficult. One of the hardest for me has been letting go of the need to control everything. I often feel like I’m the sole decision maker, the one who should have the final say. I can plan as much as I want, map everything out, and think I’ve accounted for every angle. But circumstances shift, people change, the world moves faster than I expect, and someone else’s choices can completely upend what I thought was settled.
When it’s just me making the call, who do I really have to rely on?
This year, I’ve adopted a different process. I sit with whatever is weighing on me early in the morning, coffee in hand. I write it out in ink. I surrender my problems on paper. Even when I can’t articulate the problem, question, or decision into a clear statement, I still write, just to get it out of my head and onto the page. Then I pray. I surrender the issue, one of many, if I’m being honest, but I try to focus on the one sitting at the front of my mind. I know life is chaos and this is not easily accomplished. This is even harder with children. But I hope that my children seeing me take a moment to sit, write, think, and pray about my life and theirs by proxy, would instill this value in them.
When I take the time to physically stop, and write out my issue on paper, it is real. It is there, but it is out of me. I surrender this, I do not simply give up on it unless that is what I am led to. I pull it from my storm, isolate it and let God know that I am struggling with it. There, the unraveling begins. I become unattached to this problem and see it for what it really is. Nonsense. And in this realization, I find that I am not alone. I am both guided and protected by his hand.
Now, I am in awe, as I look back at my journal and see the problems that I jotted down over the year. When I see what my point of view on the problem was and how much change has come since. And I am not flawless in my approach. Some entries repeat themselves many times, as these are the struggles of the flesh. But even in those repetitions, I can trace the slow, steady work that God has been doing in me. When I apply a stoic perspective to those repeat offenders, I can see that their presence on the page is not failure. If the problem still returns, then my reaction to it is where the work is happening. My feelings toward it are being refined. The struggle itself becomes the evidence that God is still shaping me.
This morning practice is now a space where reflection becomes strength.
-D. Caulder