Letting go is hard to do

You know, it's easy to be non-controlling when there's nothing to control.


What a stupid sentence. What I meant to say, is I'm clingy.


No, that's not right either. I'm just really controlling and don't like letting go of things when I know I no longer can manipulate the outcome.


There. I said it. I want to control things so I can manipulate the outcome. How attractive am I? Too attractive. Everybody loves people like that.


On the whole, I would totally just control and map and analyze and regulate every single facet of my life if given the opportunity. Because I think I know what I want. And I think I know what I need.  And I'm pretty sure I know what everyone else needs. And to be perfectly honest, people aren't hard to manipulate, situations even less so, and so normally, I can get what I want.

And then Jesus comes in. Which is always a party, because then I have to let go of things. I have to hand up situations that were never mine to order, and people that were never mine to try to control, and I have to let go of my idea of the way things should work out, and be open to the fact that I serve a God not interested in the little workings of my world nearly as much as He is interested in His glory. His glory and my good, although my good is rarely what I think it means.


And all of the sudden, sacrifice of self becomes much more painful. The altar now consists of hopes and desires and dreams that I have to nail to it and let Jesus put through fire that tests. Fire that often burns away a lot more than I'd like it to. Letting Jesus pry open my greedy little hands that are clinging to the ideas I came up with, and constructions that I store in my head and work to perfection, and throw them down. Not because He's a bully. But because they're too small. They're too weak for what He's trying to do. And they're way too shortsighted to ever really be effective in making me more like Him. In making me real.


Doesn't feel that way though. Feels like I'm throwing away the best thing that could have ever happened to me. And the voice in my head that I know is right, I have to keep listening to it, you know? Because feelings lie, and my eyes tend to be blind, and the love of God will sustain me when everything else is gone. Even if I don't feel it. I believe it.


I'm tellin ya. Letting go is hard to do.