Out of Control

The ringing phone interrupted me as I stood by my car on a sunny Tuesday afternoon four years ago. Stopped in the middle of a conversation about my dad's looming heart surgery, I was jolted, stunned and changed by the news that a very good friend had died in childbirth. So out of our control.

Nearly three years later, another ringing phone jolted us from our normal Monday evening activities. I was cleaning up the kitchen from supper when the call came telling us that D's mom and dad were in an accident and it didn't look good for Mom. Another phone call later and our worst fears were confirmed, Mom had passed away, killed instantly. Again, out of our control

And now exactly four years later, on a Friday evening, we sat at the kitchen table eating a snack when the phone rang again. Again, it was a phone call we were not expecting, but a phone call that irrevocably changed our lives. No nobody had died, as D kept repeating throughout the weekend, but our lives will never be the same.  And sitting in church that Sunday morning, waiting and wondering, our bishop said something that stuck with me, it's out of man's hands now. In other words, it's out of our control.

I don't like things being out of my control. I want to know what will happen. I want to plan my life, to put it on the schedule. And shoot, I wouldn't pencil in unexpected deaths. I wouldn't put on the Sunday schedule to have two funerals two weeks in a row for people we love. I wouldn't put have an accident that takes a beloved mother home too early. Some days I am pretty sure I could do a better job at planning my life than God does. He puts such hard things on our schedule. He calls us to places and jobs we don't like and didn't ask for. He calls us to give up children and friends and parents before we are ready to. He calls us to reconciliation, to turning the other cheek, to humility.

But could I really do a better job of controlling life? Oh, I know I couldn't. And I know, deep down inside, that God's got this. He knows what is best for each of us and He knows how much we can take and the sooner I rest and trust Him the better off I will be.

Do those unexpected phone calls change you? Oh yes, they do. They rip apart your well-constructed walls of protection, your self-perceived ideas of what your future looks like. They challenge you to love deeply, to live intentionally, and to make the most of every moment.

Do I hope there are no more unexpected phone calls in the future? Why yes,

I do hope that, but I also know we live in a fallen world and life isn't in my control. And most of all, I want to learn to live under God's control.

In the next day or two, I will be posting a book review that talks more about this. It's a book called "It's All Under Control" by Jennifer Dukes Lee. I would recommend it to everyone, but I also recognize that I was reading this book at a time in my life when I really need to recognize the need to relinquish control and it might not hit everyone the same way it's touched me.