Riding Shotgun

As I have said before, I am a control freak. You always see those bumper stickers that say, "God is my co-pilot." I have seen them for years. More recently I have seen one that says, "God is my PILOT." Pilot being in all caps. I took it to mean that they [new bumper sticker peeps] were boldly inferring that they put God in control whereas the original bumper sticker people are still trying to take control. Good grief, people. Guess you are a better Christian then huh?! Because you have the better bumper sticker. Yeah, okay. So I guess if I were to put bumper stickers on my car (which I did in high school. I had one sticker that I got at a beach clothing store that read "Surfer Girl." That is hilarious. I have never even tried to surf in my life. That was false advertisement on my part. Guess I was trying to attract all of those surfer guys living in Memphis, Tn.??), I would have the first one since I'm a control freak. The thing is, I don't think I have ever met anyone (in my entire life) who fully gave God control over every single thing in their life every single moment of their life. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I am saying I highly doubt everyone with the PILOT sticker is one. Not to mention the last time I checked judging is a sin as well. Just sayin'. Guess they are guilty of false advertisement, too. I do not mean that I don't pray for God's will to be done in my life or for God to take control of situations. I strive to always 'let go and let God.' In fact, if you ask me on most any day, I would argue with you that I am one of the PILOT people myself. Until days like today happen.

I have spent my entire week with my fussy, teething 5 month old baby girl, Collins. (Thus why my posts have been written at 11:30 p.m.ish.) She wasn't napping. She cried hard and loud if I tried to put her down. My nerves were shot. My back was killing me, and I was extremely frustrated. Today I dropped Harper off at day school, and headed to one of my favorite places in the world: Target! My (now 14 year old) niece used to call it circle and dot. If you think about it, the logo is a circle and a dot. :) I use the Target pharmacy (how convenient :), so I have to go really often. Right?! What should have taken me no more than 10 minutes found me leaving the store an hour later with not only my prescriptions but also new workout clothes and a snack. This always happens. I had been feeling sorry for myself most of the week because of the Collins deal. At exactly 10 a.m. I got online to buy my concert tickets for The Black Keys. (They went on sale at 10. And yeah, that's right, it was 9:45 a.m.ish, and I was getting a snack. Don't hate.) After about literally 15 attempts, I got the section I wanted. I got into the car and pulled up Facebook to share my excitement. When I opened it, it was automatically on the current news feed. The top status was that of one of my husband's (Chris) college friends. Not a super close one, but we all hung out many times. His wife has cancer, and I already knew that. She was diagnosed less than a year ago, and they have two small boys. I won't share the post verbatim, because it was too heartbreaking. Lets just say things are not good. I drove about 10 miles to my house. Parked in the garage. And started bawling. I have never met her. I know nothing about her, and I haven't seen him in 8 years. But, I just could not handle how terrible I felt for their whole family. I suddenly felt absolutely ridiculous for feeling sorry for myself all week just because I had a fussy baby and my back hurt. Wow. Talk about putting things into perspective. I began to pray and pray hard for all of them. I called my sister to talk and get my mind off of the sad news. And then for me, the day goes on as usual. But all of a sudden my back hurting and my frustration seemed to disappear.

So, at this point it is about 2 p.m. I check my email on my phone a lot. A lot a lot. I had noticed a few hours before that I had an email from the Director of Harper's school. She periodically send things out with upcoming events, etc. I skipped over it several times. Collins was down (for an hour, which was a miracle), so I read the email. It was heart wrenching. Heartbreaking isn't even horrible enough. It was a story about what a fellow Cambridge Academy (HA's day school) family was currently going through. I refuse to share any of these details, because they are unbearable. I began bawling for the second time in a 4 hour span. It was at that moment that I went from PILOT to co-pilot.

I could not handle the thought of this horrible situation. My brain immediately went into "well maybe if" mode. As in there had to have been some way that if someone had done something differently, the situation would never have occurred. You know, because when you control things you can control the outcome. Basically, I was reassuring myself that I ultimately have control and have the ability to keep everything as I would like it to be. Man, if only... but then again, what if I did have control? What a burden that would be! Knowing that if anything ever did go wrong, it was all my fault. That me not being perfect at all times was what produced the bad results. Who could handle that? No one. Thankfully (whether we realize it or not), God doesn't put that on us. We don't have control, and he knows all of the reasons why we don't.

Ultimately, He is the all knowing, all powerful God that we fervently pray to for guidance, support, comfort, healing, knowledge, strength and all else that we fail at daily. As humans, we are not supposed to be perfect. It isn't even possible. You can blame a little lady and a piece of fruit for that one. So I do not have control, but I know the One who does. I pray that it wouldn't always take news of heartache, whether mine or someone else's, to remind me of that.

Therefore I pray that God helps make me into a Christian who has neither bumper sticker. I just want to be a Christian that gives God control and that doesn't judge others thinking I am better at it than the next.

Don't worry, I won't dig so deep tomorrow, but I felt God put this on my heart to share.