Broken Window Pains

» om! I need control!” my three-year-old “hollered from his car seat in the back of be .4..our Suburban. He wanted the window down on his side of the vehicle but the child safety feature had locked his control button.

“Mom, I need control!” Control. How many times in my own life had I pleaded to God for control? Too many.

In my marriage, how many disagreements (okay, fights) have my husband and I had because we both wanted control over a situation? He wanted to relo- cate our family to this city. I wanted to live in another town. He wanted to spend our money on this.

I wanted to buy that. I wanted our bathroom painted Groovy Golden Yellow, he wanted to paint it... okay, maybe he was right on that one. In parenting, how many times had I exerted my own will before talking things over with God?

I wanted my son and daughters to experience the joy of music, the- ater, and dance. I enrolled them in Swedish folk dance, children’s musicals, and piano lessons . . . but my chil- dren are all jocks.

They prefer basketball over Bach, 84 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD soccer over Shakespeare, and fishing over folk dance. In my job as a writer, how many times have | attempted to control a piece, to make it the story I wanted it to be, instead of allowing the truth of a situa- tion to tell its own tale? As a Christian, how many times have I snowplowed through the liturgy, searching for my own agenda, lamenting: “I didn’t get anything out of church!” instead of just being part of the Body of Christ?

We all imagine it would be so easy, so convenient, if, like my boy in the backseat, we could just push that “control” button in life whenever we want to obtain something: Money. Success. Health. A candy bar the size of Rhode Island.

We imagine that if everyone did things our way, the world would be a much better place. If only God would conform His will to ours, right? Then, I think back to the little boy in the backseat. . . .

“Mom! I need control!” “Andrew, honey, the child safety thingy only lets me lower your window from the driver’s side. You have to stop pushing your button for mine to work.”

My boy just kept pulsing the button with the window icon. “I will make it go down by myself! I need control, Mom!” Then the window did a funny thing.

With me on the driver’s seat pushing the control button down and my son in the backseat pushing the control button down, LIVING YOUR FAITH 85 the window went out of whack. After a series of abrupt jolts, the window’s movement ceased.

It stuck. Jammed. My son and I, passenger and driver, both control com- mandoes, lost our objective. Because we were unwill- ing to compromise a little, we both lost a lot of control.

God gave us His Son, the Holy Spirit, the church, and each other to help us find our way to Him. But some- times we have to relinquish control over a situation to come to the truth of it.

Today, when I am confronted with a new situation—a church teaching, a suffering in the world, a loss, even a success—I try to holler to Christ, up there in the front seat, “Hey, God! I want control of this!” But before I push my own driver’s side control I add, “But Your will be done.”

It all goes down so much better then. She Comes from God: