control

while i wouldn't describe myself as a control freak, there have been those in my life who have wandered into that neighborhood, and made such an assertion.

okay, so i like to be in control. but let's not blow this out of perspective. i don't want supremacy over the whole world. i have no such secret ambitions. {now, if we were talking my own small island near the south of france, i think i would make a very good Queen Susanne... but we digress.}

all this to say, that while i may have degrees of desire to be in control, i wouldn't really call them issues. there are simply things that life goes better when i have the power to manage them.

let me say that this week, in my work life, there wasn't a great deal of control to be had. a new {and faulty} version of Photoshop took over my life, and refused to let me do my job. do you know what happens when i cannot do my job? i didn't, until it all came to a head yesterday, and while i won't go into all the details, let me just say that it isn't pretty. one thing that i definitely did not have control over yesterday was my reaction to the situation.

basically, as i sat at my desk, the fifth time i tried to do the one thing i needed to do to finish the sermon presentation for sunday, and the fifth time Photoshop crashed my computer in an hour, i had the grown up equivalent of a temper tantrum. there were tears—angry tears, definitely not the pretty kind. there was anger. there were pouty faces. there was grumbling.

i was a mess.

you want to believe that when life doesn't go your way that you will handle it with grace and poise. not to mention the reminder that even if Photoshop doesn't work ever again, God is still God, and in the big picture, nothing has changed.

i want to believe i am this person, but yesterday proved that i am not yet her.

being daily aware of the fact that i am not a perfect person, i rarely have illusions of sainthood. but the place i went to yesterday, simply because i could not do my job, has reminded me that i still have so far to go, there is still so much more inside me that needs to be illuminated by God's grace, and changed to be more like Jesus.

so far to go...