When I Lose Control

I sat on the edge of my bed pouring words into a tattered journal. Words I couldn’t bear to speak out-loud, as they were overflowing from my heart. Words I wanted God to hear as I pleaded with Him and prayed for the man I had held while he said goodbye. How could You take him, God? Blue ink ran as the scribbled words were struck with teardrops. A trail of snot slowly escaped a nostril towards an upper lip as it quivered, but I was writing too frantically to be bothered with wiping it away. As my heart stopped screaming, the words slowed down, and I succumbed to the tears. Crying into the open journal, I lost myself in grief. Slowly the sobbing was done and I closed the journal. Looking down for the first time, I noticed the Poem on the cover just beneath my hand. It was the Footprints poem that talked about a man walking with God at the end of his life. He noticed each time he was facing difficulty God appeared to leave his side and yet God retorted "During your times of trial and suffering, it was then that I carried you."

A fresh set of tears flooded my cheeks. It was over a year ago that I started using this journal. Before I knew the sickness that would take the man I loved, before I knew the pain we’d go through, or before the doctors, hospitals and surgeries. Before any of it began, God had been carrying me and placed this journal in my hands for this exact moment. When I was a little girl, my parents had this poem embossed on a plaque that hung in our house. When I moved out of my parent’s house I took the plaque with me. It moved with me to college, to my first apartment, to adventures with roommates in different cities and now rested on a wall in the bedroom where I sat crying. God has been carrying me my entire life.

Though God had been carrying me I held tight to a belief that I had to manage on my own. I found it a sign of weakness to have to be carried. I grew up in a home where emotions were not talked about. Generations before me put on strong faces; they worked hard to get the job done and didn’t allow their feelings to get in the way. In my mind, it was better to be stoic in the moment and if I had to fall to pieces it should be done in the privacy of my own home. Therefore I learned to compartmentalize my emotions. Compartmentalizing was easy for me and much more comfortable. I couldn’t allow others to see my emotions but what I didn’t realize was I also couldn’t allow myself to see my true emotions. With each compartmentalization I drove a wedge between myself and God thinking I could walk alone. I controlled my emotions only allowing what I was comfortable feeling and I gripped tightly to walking alone.

Each time I turned to the comforts of control I was jumping from God’s embrace and putting Him at arm’s length. I have fought surrender because to me it was weakness. Men at war surrender only when they give up the fight. Surrender would mean I didn’t have what it takes to lead the charge, to hold up my end of the equation, to walk alone. Emphory, the Empowered Abundance Coaching Program, has allowed me to strip away the layers of the persona I’ve built over time and come to a new definition of surrender. I’ve been allowed to lose control and explore my emotions in safety and truly feel God carrying me.

Now I see surrender as truly knowing me and truly knowing God is with and within me. As the layers I had built slowly began to slough away I began to see myself much more clearly. I’ve had a lot of gripping in my life. My control has come out of fear; fear of seeing my own flaws and vulnerability. God says do not place any idols above me and yet my control was an idol I placed more important than surrendering into Him. Total surrender allows me to see my flaws without judgment. As I loosen my grip on controlling how others view me, I step into my flaws and surrender to their beauty.

Through surrender I can show up authentically me. If tomorrow I see my yesterday me as not a full representation of the me of today, then I can step into the fullness of me today. There’s no shame, no control or no regret. There is no second guessing. From moment to moment I can truly be me. Surrender means I am 100% me and 100% God’s child. I can be vulnerable and allow God to carry me when it’s too hard for me to take a step. I can also be strong by knowing myself well enough to loosen my grip and completely surrender.