Take The Wheel

My middle. Bless. BUH-less. From the moment he entered the delivery room, my middle turkey made it clear that he was here on his own terms. He spent the first couple of years of his life pretty quiet and shy around others, slowly building up his vocabulary at home. But one day the floodgates opened and he hasn’t stopped since. Seriously, the child talks NONSTOP. NON. STOP. All the live long day. And since I am now home with him every day (what a blessing), there are days I want to mull over my gratitude at the crazy farm. Because, WOW.

In all seriousness, I count it such a privilege to be at home with my boys each day. And I truly believe that it is no accident that God allowed this, Nic’s last year before school, to be my first year at home. My sweet boy needs a special kind of loving, and I love getting to spend those moments with him.

A few days ago, Roman was napping and I was cleaning up outside. Dominic came with me to ride his bike while I was working. I gave him some guidelines about where he could ride, which included: “anywhere on the cement, but not on the sidewalk.” (We have lost more than one landscape light to bicycle sidewalk traffic. May they rest in peace.) So upon laying down the rules, he looks at me and says, “So if I want to, I could just ride on the sidewalk?” Oh. Em. Gee.

But then I realized, I do the exact same thing with God. How many times have I asked God for direction, but then thinking I had it all figured out myself said, “Okay, so I can just go the way I want to?” And that’s when I had the courtesy to even ask at all. Yikes.

I have spent my whole life working so hard to be so well put together. To make sure everything goes perfectly according to plan. To keep a tight grip on the reins of control in my life. The last several months of my life have been an all out whirlwind of commotion beyond my control. And slowly, God has been stripping me of control in every single aspect of my life. If I had a plan, it fell to pieces. If I tried to control a situation, it proved out of my control. It has been incredibly frustrating and tremendously humbling.

And then there was Friday night.

It wasn’t until I found myself unexplainably parked safely on the shoulder of the interstate after colliding with a wild hog that weighed a couple hundred pounds (seriously, can’t make this stuff up…) that I arrived at the pinnacle of the lesson. I never saw the hog. I couldn’t control hitting him. Had I seen it, I wouldn’t have been able to control my reaction, or the momentum of my swerving vehicle. I couldn’t control my emotions as I sat there breathing in the unforgettable stench of the newly released air bag. I couldn’t control the fact that I only wanted my husband in that moment, but he is hundreds of miles away providing for our family. I can’t control the fact that I have a vehicle that is not drivable and we are soon due to leave on vacation. So many things, beyond my control.

And yet, it all worked out perfectly. I never left the road. I should have ended up in the trees, careening across lanes of traffic, flipping into a field. But somehow, without any credit to me at all, I ended up perfectly parked on the side, in park, with no injuries and no real memory of how I even managed that. The trooper was someone I knew. My mom and brother were there more quickly than I could have imagined.

I didn’t have a plan. I lost complete control. But my God, my Protector and Provider, had it all worked out—just the way He will perfectly orchestrate every single area of my life if I simply let Him. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. But when life meets unexpected adversity and I am helpless and lose control, I can rest assured that my God has control and He will guide me to safety each and every time.

It’s been a long year. A lot of bumps and bruises and shaking my fists and crying out wondering why in the world God wasn’t doing a better job of managing my life. Maybe it was because I should have just let Him…