What Are You Trying to Control?

One of the things I tell my kids is that there are really only three things you can control in life: me, how I respond to people, and how I respond to Jesus. I don’t remember when I first started saying it, but I’ve repeated it so many times over the years that they could probably finish the sentence for me. Like a lot of things I’ve tried to teach my kids, though, I’ve discovered that knowing something and actually living it are two very different things. I wish I could say I’ve always lived by those words. I haven’t.

Control is a strange thing because I don’t think most of us would describe ourselves as controlling. I know I wouldn’t have. When I thought about a controlling person, I pictured someone demanding, domineering, or needing everything done his way. That wasn’t how I saw myself. I saw myself as responsible. I was a husband and father trying to take care of my family. I was a leader trying to make good decisions for the good of the people and the company. When something went wrong, I tried to fix it to the best of my ability. And in the face of uncertainty, I tried to think far enough ahead to prepare for whatever might happen.

For most of my life, those qualities have worked and, in some cases, made me very successful in them. I don’t think God is asking me to become passive or stop taking responsibility for the things He has entrusted to me. What I’ve had to confront is how easily responsibility can cross a line without me noticing. Somewhere along the way, taking responsibility for what belonged to me became carrying responsibility for things that never belonged to me in the first place.

My marriage probably taught me that more painfully than anything else has.

There were times when I desperately wanted to fix what was happening between us. I wanted to say the right thing, do the right things, find the right approach to difficult conversations, and somehow get us to a better place. I would replay conversations in my head and think about what I should have said differently. I tried to anticipate how something might be received before I said it. Sometimes I was trying to keep the peace. Other times I was trying to protect someone I loved. There were probably times when I genuinely thought I was doing the loving thing. But underneath it all was fear. I was trying to control the outcome.

That’s difficult for me to admit because the motivation didn’t always feel selfish. I loved my wife. I cared deeply about my marriage. Of course I wanted things to be okay. But I slowly began to see that wanting something good doesn’t give me the ability to control how another person thinks, feels, heals, responds, or changes. I choose how I show up. I can listen instead of defending myself or proving I’m right. I can take responsibility for things that were mine. I can apologize without demanding that my apology produce a particular response. I can love without trying to manage what came back to me. What I couldn’t do was reach inside another person’s heart and make it move at the pace I wanted it to move. That was a hard lesson because fixing things had always made me feel useful. When fixing wasn’t possible, I felt helpless, and I didn’t like helpless.

I’ve started to wonder whether some of what I used to call control was really my attempt to avoid feeling helpless. Uncertainty has never been a comfortable place for me, so my mind would go to work trying to figure out what was coming next. I would anticipate outcomes, replay conversations, and think through what I could say differently to keep things from going somewhere painful. Somewhere in all of that, I think I convinced myself that being prepared meant I was protected. Control gave me a sense of safety, as though thinking far enough ahead could somehow protect me and the people I loved from outcomes I didn’t want.

The problem is that eventually life brings you to something you cannot manage no matter how responsible, prepared, or faithful you’ve tried to be. I’ve experienced that in relationships, with my kids as they’ve gotten older, at work, and especially in places where I’ve prayed, and God didn’t give me the outcome I wanted. Eventually you reach the edge of your own influence and realize that everything beyond it belongs to somebody else or to God. I don’t enjoy that edge.

For years, my response to reaching that edge was usually to try harder. My mind would go into overdrive looking for something I hadn’t considered yet, because surely there was another conversation to have, something I could learn, or some piece of information I was missing. I could even turn prayer into another attempt at solving the problem. I wasn’t always coming to God with open hands. Sometimes I was bringing Him the outcome I had already decided was best and asking Him to make it happen. I still catch myself doing that.

There is a story in the Gospels I’ve begun to appreciate differently as I’ve gotten older. Peter sees Jesus walking on the water and asks to come to Him. Jesus tells him to come, and Peter actually gets out of the boat. I’ve heard countless messages about Peter taking his eyes off Jesus and looking at the wind, but lately I’ve found myself thinking about the absurdity of the situation itself. Peter was standing in a place where there was absolutely nothing he could control. He couldn’t make the water hold him. No matter how much he could try, he couldn’t stop the wind from blowing or calm the waves. There wasn’t a technique he could master that would make the situation safer.

All he had was Jesus.

I know how that sounds. Peter had nothing left but Jesus, and as Christians we’re supposed to read that and think, “That’s exactly where I want to be.” Maybe you do. I’m not always there. Honestly, I prefer Jesus plus a plan. Jesus plus a reasonable understanding of what happens next. Jesus plus enough influence over the situation that I can still feel like I’m contributing something. I like faith much better when I can keep one hand on the steering wheel.

But some of the deepest work God has done in me has happened when He allowed me to reach places where there wasn’t anything left for me to manage. Not because He wanted me to feel powerless, but because I needed to discover where my power actually ended. That realization has changed the way I hear the words I’ve been telling my kids.

I can control me. Even that requires the grace of God, but my choices belong to me. My words belong to me. Whether I tell the truth belongs to me. Taking responsibility when I’m wrong belongs to me. I get to decide whether fear is going to drive my behavior or whether I’m going to slow down long enough to recognize what’s happening inside me.

I can control how I respond to people. I don’t get to control how they respond to me. That distinction sounds incredibly simple until you’re standing in a conversation with someone you love and everything inside you wants them to understand your intentions. I’ve had to learn that I can explain myself without demanding to be understood. I can listen without agreeing. I can remain kind when somebody is angry with me. I can give another person room to have emotions I don’t need to fix.

And then there is the last part of what I tell my kids: I can control how I respond to Jesus. This one has probably taken me the longest to understand because following Him means accepting that much of the story isn’t mine to write. There are prayers I desperately want answered and places where I wish He would move faster, but I’ve learned that trying to predict what God will do next only leaves me frustrated when He doesn’t follow the plan I had in mind. What does belong to me is how I respond to Him in the middle of it. I get to decide whether I’m going to trust Him when I don’t understand what He’s doing, whether I’m going to stay close when life isn’t going the way I hoped, and whether I’m willing to follow Him without needing to know where all of this is going first. That’s where this has become much more than a lesson about control for me. It’s really been a lesson about surrender.

I used to think surrender was mostly about the big decisions we make with God. I thought about giving my life to Christ, putting my plans in His hands, and being willing to follow wherever He led. Those moments matter, but most of the surrender God has been teaching me hasn’t happened in moments that felt particularly spiritual. It’s usually been right in the middle of everyday life, especially when something isn’t going the way I want it to. I’ve had to learn to listen when everything in me wanted to defend myself, to live without an answer when I desperately wanted one, and to let someone I love feel what they’re feeling without believing it was my responsibility to make the emotion go away. I’m realizing surrender is often much quieter than I thought. Most of the time, nobody else even knows it’s happening. It’s simply that moment when I recognize what I’m trying to hold onto and decide whether I’m going to keep gripping it or trust God enough to loosen my hands. Marriage has given me plenty of opportunities to practice that kind of surrender.

I’ve had to learn that loving my wife well and trying to manage her experience of me aren’t the same thing. There have been times when I wanted closeness so badly that, without realizing it, my desire for closeness created pressure. I wanted healing, but I also wanted it to happen on a timeline that made me feel more secure. Even when I believed I was giving her space, there was sometimes a part of me quietly wondering how long it would take before things felt different. That’s been uncomfortable to recognize in myself because my intentions weren’t bad. I loved my wife and wanted our marriage to be healthy. But God has been showing me that love doesn’t get to decide how quickly another person’s heart moves. My responsibility is how I love her while giving God room to do what only He can do.

God has been teaching me to pay attention to the difference between love and fear in those moments. Love has slowly taught me that I can remain present without demanding an immediate result, while fear usually leaves me searching for reassurance that everything is okay. I especially notice it when I feel an urgency to resolve a conversation because sitting with uncertainty feels unbearable. I’ve confused those motivations more times than I care to admit.

Learning to release control hasn’t made me care less. In some ways, I think it has allowed me to care more honestly. I’m learning that I can deeply love someone without assuming responsibility for everything happening inside them. I can pray for my children without trying to write their stories for them. I can love my wife in a way that gives her space to grow with Him, the way He wants her to grow. I can lead people without believing their choices are a reflection of my worth as a leader. I can bring my desires to God without pretending I don’t have them and still leave room for Him to be God. There is freedom in that, although I’m not sure freedom is always what it feels like at first. Sometimes surrender feels more like standing there with empty hands.

You begin to realize how much of your life you’ve spent carrying things you never actually had control over. I’ve spent far too much energy worrying about what people thought of me, wondering whether someone would forgive me, and trying to make sure my kids made the choices I hoped they would make. I’ve wanted people to recognize that I was changing, and I’ve worried about whether something I worked hard to build would actually succeed. Somewhere in all of that, I was also trying to create a version of tomorrow that felt safe enough for me to relax. The problem is that none of those things were ever mine to control. I could influence some of them, pray about all of them, and take responsibility for whatever part belonged to me, but I couldn’t determine the outcome. I think I’m finally learning how exhausting it is to carry responsibility for things God never asked me to carry.

Releasing those things doesn’t mean they stop mattering. It means I’m finally being honest about whose hands they’re in. I still tell my kids the same thing. The only things I can control in life are me, how I respond to others, and how I respond to Jesus. I hope they learn it younger than I did. More than that, I hope they see me learning to live it, because children eventually notice the difference between the things their father says and the things their father actually believes.

I’m still learning this, and I’ve discovered that surrender isn’t something I do once and never have to deal with again. I’ve handed things to God only to realize months later that I had quietly picked them back up. Sometimes I notice it in a conversation when I feel myself trying to manage where things are going. Other times it shows up late at night when my mind starts working through every possible scenario, almost as though enough thinking will give me some control over tomorrow. I’m getting better at recognizing when it’s happening, but I still have to remind myself that surrender is something I will probably be learning for the rest of my life. What has changed is that I know what I’m doing now.

And when I recognize my hands tightening around something that was never mine to control, I’m learning to bring it back to Jesus. Not because I suddenly stop caring about what happens, but because I’m becoming more convinced that my job was never to hold everything together. My job is to decide what kind of man I will be while God holds what I cannot.