CONTROL

How does one gain control and lose control at the same time?  Rachel, the founder of Love and Hope Children's Home, is taking a sabbatical.  I am now in control of the operations, decisions, etc. of the home during the process of hiring and training new staff.  With the nature of the work, many days I feel pulled in many directions and doing things that I am not quite sure about which makes me feel out of control.  For someone like me who has always been able to control the classroom, my own home, my own surroundings, this is a new challenge for me.  The other day someone said to me, "Lighten up Kelly, all of these things won't matter in 100 years".  I laughed it off on the outside but I gasped on the inside!  Is that how I am acting?  Out of control?  So how does one gain it, let go of it and not really "lose it" (like go crazy) at the same time?

I have a tendency to want to hold on to it and then get frustrated when things don't turn out the way I wanted them to.  But do I really even have control in the first place?  If I look deeper into it, my control issues come from a place of wanting to achieve (yes, I am an oldest child!).  But my service here really isn't about achievement or success, it's about Love and Hope.  The more control I find myself gaining as far as responsibilities, the more I realize I have to let go of.  I am here to serve a God that is sovereign, in control of everything.  The moments of frustration are a lack of control or lack of vision to see that God is still in control.  It's an ugly view from here, to see myself and the way I don't want to be and I've prayed that I can gracefully let go.  This is what I read this morning, "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.


I was thinking that maybe this was a little too personal, but if Paul can boast and delight in his weakness, than I can admit mine.  Please pray for me, for Rachel, for all the children, missionaries and caregivers that make up this ministry.  We have come so far in the past few months, turning corners with so much progress, but are still met with seasons of change.  Pray for the endurance to wait it out, trust in our hearts, not try to control all the issues but Hope in the one who is really in control and Love boldly throughout the process.