Out of Control

If I have a love affair with anything, it is with the desire to control. If I was a superhero, the ability to control would be my superpower. I would do stuff like stop time to work on my 5 year plan, or read peoples’ minds to know for sure what they thought of me, or fast forward in time to verify my future. I would be a narcissistic, boring superhero. (Shoot, I’m simply narcissistic and not even a superhero—boring.)

Life continually leaves me void of control; full of emotion, but absent of control. Motion, circular motion, my life is an ever increasing circular motion, like a carousel gone wrong—out of control. Motion creates emotion. I hate that. You can’t control emotions. They blindside you. One second you’re giddy and the next you’re crying. I never used to cry; now I feel like I’m never not crying. I cried the other day when I saw the trailer of a movie. The frickin’ trailer of a movie!

A friend told me infants after being molested or abused will hit their heads against the wall. They have lost any sense of feeling or emotion. They bang their skulls against the cement, so they can feel something—anything! We cut ourselves, so we can control what we feel.

My whole life is about control, or atleast, trying to control what I feel.

I think God has us right where he wants us when we realize we have no control. Control robs us from the beauty of the dynamic motion of life, exchanging it for something static and sterile, something lifeless. Love is the antithesis of control. I guess that is why for me love is the scariest feeling in the world. There is more control in fear and hate than in love. Look at what love did to Jesus. Love murdered him. He couldn’t help but go to the cross, He loves us so. At the apex of his display of love he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” I know Jesus was God and all, but that doesn’t sound to me like he felt he was in control. Only love would drive someone to do this, to go there.

I am glad Jesus is the superhero and I am not. Jesus’ superpower is love and he uses his superpower to free me from my love affair with control.