Control Freak

Why is being in control so important to me? How do I give up control of my life to God and actually let him take it? Did I really take a first step in doing this with the mom-purse Lenten discipline experiment? Now that Lent is officially over, these are the questions I'm left with. I have come to some conclusions during the last season and have also realized that this is just the beginning of the journey. There is still so much more to think and pray about.

1. I was using my mom-purse as a substitute for God. Many aspects of God in my life could be (and were!) replaced by my giant bag of awesome stuff. These include the security that God promises me, my identity in him, God being the most important thing in my life, trusting God with my life in general, and relying on myself to help fulfill the needs of others. I was guilty of idolatry, gluttony, pride, considering myself better than God, and faithlessness. These are only a few of the words I could use to describe myself. Now, does God see me as a lost cause because I treated my purse as greater than him? Nope, he actually still loves me and has cared enough to help me see where I have gone wrong so I can come back to where I belong in his family.

2. God wants me to be his. I would tell you that I have been God's child from a very early age and that I haven't looked back, but that would pretty much be a lie. I did give my heart to God when I was very young, and I have been on a journey to live my life for him ever since, but regretably, I have stumbled and faltered and needed to be kicked in the pants here and there to get back on the path God has laid out for me. It is not for my own self-help that this purse experiment was important. I have not been doing what God wants me to do, and he is saddened when I try to rebel against him and do my own thing and think that I am amazing apart from him. He wants me for his own and doesn't want to share me with anyone or anything. There is a reason he is described as a jealous God in the Ten Commandments.

3. I am a child of God. I don't need to be super cool in the eyes of my coworkers or be the picture of awesomeness to strangers or be a world-renowned superstar because none of that matters. What matters is that God has claimed me for his own and has promised to do great things in me through him. I can bask in the love that he pours out on me and be content wherever he has me because he is really all that matters. Knowing this and putting it into action are two different things, and I would like to think that I have finally come to terms with the fact that I finally know this to be true. Next will come the hard part of constantly reminding myself that I do know it's true and continuing to be happy finding my identity in God. I am a fickle person. I have trouble sticking it out even when I know it's the best thing for me, and I know this will be very hard to do. It is super freeing to have finally figured it out in my brain though, and I feel like it's a good place to start.

4. I can't control any part of my life. No matter how hard I try, I will never be in control of my life. I'm not even in control of my body, and I'm intimately aware of it at all times. If I can't tell my body what to do, how can I expect to be able to control anything else in my life in a legitimate way? Not being in control of how things work out for me has always been the biggest hurdle for me on my way to God. I crave knowing what is going to happen and planning out each step so that I won't ever be surprised or hurt or sad or disappointed. I like to say that God is throwing me curveballs when something unexpected or bad happens, but the reality is that God isn't trying to mess me up just for the fun of it or to teach me a lesson. It was probably what he had planned all along and I was just too self-absorbed to wait patiently for it. It was unexpected for me because I refused to be ready for whatever he had planned and insisted on being ready for what I had planned.  If you are never looking for something, it will always be a surprise. I wasn't looking for God's plan because I was too focused on my own plan. And let me tell you, my plan always gets messed up. God is much better at charting the course of my life than I could ever be.

Throughout my Lenten discipline this year, lots of things came to me about what I need to continue working on in my relationship with God. Most of them relate back to this issue of control for me in one way or another, which means I have only scratched the surface of my identity as a control freak. Don't worry, just because Lent is over doesn't mean I have completed my discipline. I'm going to continue exploring my major issues and hopefully make some real progress, with God's help.

Identity Crisis

I have faced my mom-purse head on and have delved deep into my feelings of false security and my trust (or lack thereof) in God. I have purged my false idols and security blankets from my purse and felt the freedom of not having all the answers. Now, I am faced with an issue I did not anticipate: who am I without my mom-purse?

Now, I don't claim to have solved my issues, but I have made some significant headway and come to some good conclusions (conclusions will be laid out in a future post). Along the way, I have come to realize that a lot of who I think I am is wrapped up in this notion of the mom-purse and what it makes me into. I have been calling myself an uber boy scout but secretly in the wildly fantastic recesses of my imagination, I had considered myself somewhat of a superhero. I know that people consider mothers superheroes because we give birth and we juggle so many things and we're awesome, blah, blah, blah, but in general in my life I am not particularly extraordinary. I'm good at lots of things and don't excel at anything. My job is somewhat interesting, but it really doesn't require much prowess to go to work every day and be judged on how close you are to a particular number goal and then get yelled at for not meeting it, even when you are actually above said goal. Waking up every morning doesn't really earn you a gold star in accomplishing life, and while I was a good student, I wasn't at the top of anything. I have always enjoyed playing sports, and while I had a lot of fun, I was never the all-star athlete, and I could never now be at the level I used to be at. I consider myself a highly accomplished middle-roader, which is just fine to be unless you've always dreamed of being a superhero.

A superhero does not have to be someone that dresses up in spandex (ew!) and flies around the city saving babies from terrible villains intent on destroying the world. My brand of superhero is the type of person that makes a difference to those around them in significant ways and is often imitated but never replaced. A superhero is singularly unique individual that you cannot help but be drawn to and want to be around all the time because they are totally awesome! And, of course, every superhero must have an array of gadgets and supplies with which to fight whatever is thrown at them and those around them.

Aha, now you are starting to see why my mom-purse was so important to me. If I were ever going to be a superhero, I was going to be one whose problem-fighting abilities knows no bounds. Kid got a runny nose? Wham! Here's a tissue from my magic bag. Heartburn? I will not only diagnose you, I will also have the means to make you better. Dog nose spot on your glasses? Never fear, Mom-Purse Mom is here...with a special little cloth that will not only clean those glasses, it won't leave lint or smudges and will never scratch the lenses. Can you see how tempting it sounds to be Mom-Purse Mom?

My purse was my identity because I felt like it made me into a superhero. More than that, I felt like it made me different, someone that stood out and had a special purpose. It made me feel special and needed. I have already talked about how I used my giant purse to help me feel secure and basically replaced God with it, and I have realized that I did the same thing on another level: I used my purse to give myself an identity when all I had to do was be content with the identity God had given me.

Easier said than done, right? We learn in Sunday School that the best thing about us is that we have been made in God's image and that we are his children, and that should be enough for us. But how many of us are actually genuinely able to legitimately see that, not to mention really put it into practice? I thought my biggest problem in my faith walk was that I didn't trust God enough to take care of me, and now I realize I haven't even been identifying myself as one of his own. That is a severely crushing blow to a wannabe superhero. 

The cool thing is that through my quest to be a superhero in the eyes of the world, I have completely ignored the fact that I am already a superhero in my own life because of who I am in Christ. All those attributes I listed earlier as being the signs of a superhero, well, guess what? Since I have Christ in me I actually embody all of those and more. He is the one that is the ultimate superhero, and I get to shine his awesomeness out into the world so that others can bask in his greatness. I wanted to be a superhero to this world, and until I cleared away all the clutter, I couldn't see that the superhero of the universe was the one that really matters. 

Does this mean I can be content to be identified as one of God's children and forego any and all recognition or prestige in this world because it ultimately means nothing? That is something I am going to continue to work on, but that I am glad I finally realized is my reality.

The Purge

It has been several weeks since I cleaned out my purse and this is what I have been left with. It is a much smaller collection of useful items than what I started with, and I am super proud of myself for paring my life down to this size. The process started with me dumping the entire contents of my mom-purse out on the ottoman and staring at it in wonder and embarrassment. I went through each and every item individually, considering how I thought it was useful and how it had been since I had actually used it. I found quite a bit of trash, which was easy to get rid of because, well, it was trash. I discovered I had more than 3 chapsticks and several lip glosses on top of those so I just had to choose the one I liked the best and stored the others away in my make-up bag. I also had at least three lotions, of which I really only used one, so I put the others in my bedside table.

There were tissues and phone chargers and work badges and bills and notepads and lots of writing utensils. I decided to create a pouch only for work that I can keep my work phone, charger, badges, keys, and miscellaneous passwords and business cards in that I only keep in my purse during the work day. I can take it out and leave it on my desk for the next day and still have everything in one place without cluttering up my regular life. I agonized over the bandaid situation because I find that I need them quite often, as do my children, and in the end I decided to update the collection to more useful sizes and shapes and keep them in the purse. I put all but one pen back in the desk drawer, tore out the used pages in my notepad, and only kept one of the notepads in circulation. I figured once the winter is over for good, I will not need the tissues anymore, so those are being kept temporarily. Certain medications are always needed during the day or taken on a schedule, and I'm sorry, but gum is a very handy thing to have so as not to offend anybody you are doing business with after lunch.

All in all, it was a successful sorting of the mom-purse. I can tell it was a successful sorting because I have kept the same amount of stuff out of the bag ever since I cleaned it out. This tells me I never really needed all of it in the first place. I have even been able to objectively go through it all and further eliminate items that at first I thought I really needed but then realized I didn't.

My proudest moment came about a week after the initial purging when Chad asked me if he could borrow my nail file and I said I didn't have one. This has happened several times, and each time it actually has not killed me to not have the item a person is requesting. It is so freeing to actually say no and not provide a solution to someone else's non-emergency. It's not that I don't care, and I'm still struggling with not being the one that has all the answers to everyone's every need, but it is encouraging to myself that my Lenten journey actually yielded some results.

I have since switched to a smaller purse altogether, one that cannot possibly hold all the stuff my former one used to. It is lighter and fits better in the center console of the car while I'm driving, and I have not smacked one person with it and made them almost fall over. I'm happy to not be such a large presence in the aisles of a store anymore.