A Battle of Wills

I have been learning a lot about patience these last several weeks. For a couple of weeks of August I was determined that my three-year-old daughter would master the art of the potty. She is definitely as strong-willed child and so this has been a learning time for both of us. Who is going to be in control at the end of the day? Well, it turns out that after a week of constant supervision, she finally did master the art and even decided it was proper to go without being asked "Do you need to go potty?" It has been wonderful and in the end she realized that she was more in control by going to the potty than by making me and her mom clean up after her. I am just glad that I lived through it.

My nerves have rarely been as brittle as they were during this period of the battle of wills. This battle has taught me a thing or two about being patient. I am trying to learn to apply this hard-learned lesson to my work in the church. I have the privilege of working with some of the most compassionate and caring individuals I have met. They have made my transition to full-time church ministry much easier. But, I have one situation that continues to rear its head and I have come to a realization: I want to be in control and it bothers me that I cannot control the situation. I usually have a way of diffusing tense situations, but again this is a way for me to be in control. I am having to learn to give those things that I cannot control over to the Lord, rather than trying to work them out myself. And I am good at working them out myself. Again, it is about control. Just like my little one and her potty problems, always wanting to control or dominate situations she finds herself in, I want to do the same, albeit in a much more genteel way. It has to be about letting Him work it out. We spend so much of our time fighting battles, when God asks us to praise Him and let Him fight the battles for us. And we wonder why we don't win these battles or why they keep coming back to haunt us.

The pictures above are ones I took last year in Egypt. The Sphinx is an amazing sight, so old and mysterious and very patient. I guess a rock really is not patient, just stuck in one place. But it has no control over its surroundings or what happens to it. I pray that one day I will be able to give up control of all this mess and allow God to take control so that I don't have to worry about it anymore. Let it be today!