I have this little habit of organizing physical things when I can’t organize the intangible things in my life.
When I was in middle school my counselor told me that she thought I had obsessive-compulsive disorder. My school binders were fastidious in every account, from the way the labels had to be on the binder, to the arranging of them in my locker and then there was the fact of the actual contents of the binders had to be to my standards. For example, in my math binder, I believed that if my homework lessons were out of order then I would fail my weekly math tests. No joke.
Things had a very particular order for me in school. While my counselor thought I had O.C.D. it was into my later years of high school when I started to wonder why the obsessiveness didn’t transfer into my home life. I’ve always been an organized person and have always wanted things to be neat and tidy, but if my bed remained unmade, I never thought that I would have a bad day. School was my exception and honestly, my obsessiveness at school rewarded me with exceptional grades.
It was late into high school that I realized that I liked that I could control my grades. I knew if I did everything right, then my grades would reflect that. On the other hand, I watched at home as my mom did everything right and she never got better, most of the time she got worse. When I was sitting with my doctor’s going over my latest test results, it never mattered if I had done “everything right.” My results continually came back not in my favor.
Thankfully, I never gave up on doing the “right” things with my health, although many days I wanted to. But I have always known, even when I couldn’t verbalize it, that my health and my mom’s health was completely out of my hands. When I had to leave college, I left my control there too. I didn’t leave my desire for control, but I did leave my ability to control. I don’t have the power to control much of anything in my life these days and that was and is a really hard realization, but a necessary one.
My earth-shattering moment came when I realized I know who does have the power to control anything and everything. If I can’t have control, then I’m glad that my best friend is the one who does have the control. I trust Him. I have confidence in His decisions, even when I don’t understand them. And, unlike middle school, I don’t have to keep everything perfectly in order for things to work out for my good.
In fact, He works best in my mess. What a relief it is to not have to carry the weight of controlling everything. It was and is a journey and at the beginning, it was really hard to ditch the extra weight, but nowadays and the messier my world looks, the easier it is to hand Him the weight and “Be still and know” that He is God and He’s got it.
As the world got scarier in the last couple of weeks, I caught myself picking up the extra weight. Parts of our house have never looked better thanks to my obsessive need to organize and clean during this time, but boy was I tired. Soooo tired. The kind of tired where sleep doesn’t renew you.
Thankfully, the Holy Spirit nudged me that as long as I kept carrying the extra weight there was no chance of renewing or resting.
Yesterday, I erased some things off my to-do list and went and sat on my deck for a couple of hours.
It was in the sunshine that I felt His love. The wind reminded me of His power. The birds chirping reminded me of His beauty. I felt His presence and I caught myself telling Him “No, you can’t be here. You need to go take care of the world.” Then, I felt Him say “Be still and know.”
I gave Him back the heavyweight of control and found myself renewing. I realized that not only does He have this virus in His hands, He simultaneously and equally has me in His hands too.
So, we all struggle with control in one way or another, I’m not unique in that way, neither am I unique to the calling of being still and knowing that He is God and that He’s got this and in the same breath He’s got you. Are you ready to ditch the heavyweights and start to truly renew? How can you “Be still and know”? Will you let Him renew and recharge you during this chaos?
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