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| Hudson: Championing R&R |
As many of you have come to know, I see myself as a moderately obsessive-compulsive person (I say moderately because I have not yet had the need to see professional help on the matter). I do have the ability to let things go now (thank you, 3 years of teaching in a public high school), but I nevertheless like to be in control and need to see the fruition of my labor before allowing myself to relax (lest my hyperactive mind yells at me to get my lazy butt up and finish the job).
It’s not my need for perfection in the minor day-to-day tasks I do that worries me (in fact, it tends to be helpful in making sure I tie up all loose ends when it comes to both work and home projects). What does worry me is my need to make my home, family, and life “picture-perfect” (or whatever that means in my head). There’s a theoretical time-table I’m supposed to stick to in meeting all of the benchmarks of life – marriage, having children, and ultimately being settled into “family life” and becoming the epitome of domestic perfection. Oh…and of course, “I have to be career-driven too!” I can’t be “defined by the 1950’s stereotype of what it means to be a woman” (please note, I’m being sarcastic and inane – there is much honor and I have much admiration for all of you moms who choose to stay at home). I have to be successful both in the working world and the home world in order to complete this “picture-perfect” life.
It’s a sickness…and being this obsessed with “the perfect life” is one of the tell-tale signs of this sickness called “pride”. Ultimately, my need to control my life boils down to my inability to admit that I am not as awesome as I want to believe I am. I am not as perfect as I want to believe I am. In short, I am not God, but I want to be.
No matter how much I want to deny it, my need to be in control of my life is a BIG FAT SIN! No, I’m not saying I’m going to let me life fall into self-imposed anarchy. What I am saying is that I have no business trying to take over a role in my life that belongs to someone who is far more qualified than I.
Of course, being the “good Christian” that I am, I went through the motions and said all the right things about how I knew it was “all in God’s timing” and how I “completely trusted Him”. But in truth, in my sinful heart, I wasn’t trusting Him. I wanted God to give me what I wanted at the time I wanted in the way I wanted (wow…such a control freak!). I wasn’t ready to accept the possibility that God, perhaps, may have something else in mind for me during this season of my life. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel and give up control over to Him, trusting, no matter how long it takes or how dire it seems, that He had plans “to give me a future and hope”.
