Control. Something that all of us want, but most of us don't have. The ability to control the weather. Lottery tickets. Traffic lights when you're running late for work. To extend the last moments that we have with our loved ones. What will happen to you tomorrow. We all want to know.
I'm 27. The 26 years before this one, I thought I was doing a pretty great job of controlling the circumstances of what happened around me. Throughout my life, I have taken very calculated risks. I stepped out only enough to peek around the corner to see what was coming next. The whole leap of faith thing never appealed to me. I always needed to know what was coming next. If I didn't like what was coming next, I had to organize circumstances in my life that would lead to my desired outcome.
Then the 27th year happened. Boom! Zap! Wham! (and all the other examples of onomatopoeia that resembles the sound of getting hitby a bus) I lost it. I applied for new jobs that I thought were in my reach. I didn't get them. I broke up with someone who loved me, because I thought I could find someone who fit into the model of who I thought I was supposed to be with. I haven't found him yet. I took on a million and one projects at work to prove that nobody could out work me. Then I got lapped. I tried to take care of myself, by myself. I got sick. I tried to catch my breath to get better, but I couldn't breathe. Months have gone by with me still waiting on the snap back. The moment where I can take a deep breath again without wrenching pain. A day when I don't wake up with an immediate reminder that I was diagnosed with lupus. A day where I can wake up again and feel some sense of control about what will happen to me that day. That day has not yet come, but a lesson has.
This year has taught me one thing. While you can't control everything that happens to you, you can control how you react to them. Our reactions to life's difficulties is what defines us. In fact, I don't think you can define yourself until life gives you a situation that offers a definition.
I used to teach 6th grade. Before any lesson we ever did on character development, I always asked, “Can you come up with three words to describe yourself?” At the beginnnig of 2016, my three words would have been different than if I was asked that question again today. Needless to say, this has been a defining year for me. Not because of a large number of life events. I'm not engaged. I haven't had kids. I have been working in the same job for the past 4 years. The definition has come in the non-fulfillment of all of those things. Not that I'm jumping to have children...but I have seen everyone around me gain the things that I have wanted so much throughout various times this year. It has made me feel small. It has made me feel insignificant. It has made me feel like a failure.
I couldn't figure out what life seemed to be working against me, why nothing was going right for me. After lots of soul searching, praying, crying to best friends, and several $30 co-pays to my therapist, I am thankful for losing the control that I thought I had.
While you can always have a plan for where you want to go, you never know what obstacles are waiting once you set sail on your course. Storms come. Winds blow. So much rain falls that you think you might drown. But just like the flowers need water to grow, sometimes we have to go through situations that produce a few tears to grow to our next level.
If we could control the things that would make us grow, we would never utilize them. As human beings, most of us have a tendency to retreat from pain. As much as I have struggled. I thank GOD for my 27th year. While I am by no means a flower yet, blossoming and beautiful. I am very much a seed that is still taking root. Let's see what blossoms the next years brings.