Control-

 Daughters, 

“If you are constantly trying to control outcomes, circumstances, and other’s perception of you, you may be forfeiting the life-transforming power of redeeming grace. If management is to control things, people, or circumstances, then our efforts to manage the broken and insufficient in our lives will only result in the anxious maneuvering and manipulation of trying to preserve our own lives” 

-Ruth Chou Simons (Art too) 

I’m currently waving my hands because this is me in a nut shell. I’m as shocked as you both are that it has taken me this long to talk about control when I practically invented the concept in my day-to-day life as if it were a sport. 

“Be still” is and has been most of this past year’s theme between your Nanie and I due to so many unseen challenges and changes in my life. 

I find myself in real time juggling anxiety but mostly worries as I try and heal from my experiences (without closure) and as I make major life changes (mostly a new job). 

I’m sure when you look back in your own childhood, you will remember me trying to control (or prevent) things in your own life like injuries or mean girls, only to have you go through those things anyways. 

Perhaps I’m slow to learn that no matter how hard I try to control the outcomes, most often life has a way of rocking the  boat we’re in (and when we least expect or think we can handle it). What I continue to find out through you both and in myself though, is that these hard life- circumstances are what is life- transforming us. 

His redeeming grace is what I need when I’m trying to control, and for you both too-

Mom