Planning and Organizing

I’ve never really though of myself as a controlling person as I love supporting others in their endeavors. But in one of my readings today I came face-to-face with one of my roadblocks that I had been trying to identify.

One of my daily devotional readings is a small book by Sarah Young, “Jesus Calling”. In today’s reading it says, “A mind preoccupied with planning pays homage to the idol of control”. Wow. This really hit me. I’m such a planner! I plan meals, work events, art projects, household chores, gardening strategies etc… you name it. Nothing makes me happier than to have all these tasks lined out in an orderly fashion and broken down into my daily duties. It makes me feel so alive! I never dreamed this could be an idol if not kept in check.

So I got to thinking and realized that on the flip side of this planner coin is the stress, anxiety, and fear that often comes when unexpected things happen. This one is tricky because the more organized I am the better I deal with the unexpected because I have the mental space for it. But obviously, while I can handle some things, I don’t handle others so well. So I worked this backwards and started thinking about what stresses me out and I realize it is always when my life takes a turn I didn’t expect to the degree that I feel out of control. So not that every time the unexpected happens I’m stressed, but every time I’m stressed it’s because of something feels out of control. Something I didn’t plan for.

Having lost my family, job, home, financial security, vehicle repossession and burglary among other things over the past few years and not dealing with it very well - or maybe I have and this is what it looks like and I don’t like it - I have spent a ton of time and energy analyzing the decisions I made and trying to figure out what I did wrong. Because all of my planning and organizing and my level of faith did not prepare me for this and I thought it would prevent ‘bad’ things from happening.

I never looked at all my planning and organizing as a way for me to be in control but for me, sometimes it absolutely is. Planning is a skill and a good thing in many ways but I need to keep it in it’s place and I didn’t realize I had come to rely on my abilities to deal with things and was not focused on God and His ability to deal with it and help me through it.

The real beauty of this is that now that I realize that even planning and organizing can get out of control, I can keep it in it’s proper place if I focus more fully on trusting God FIRST and the more I do that the better my life will be. I will continue to plan and organize the best I can, but all UNDER the hat of trusting God to help me to it according to His will and timing.

My apologies for all the run-on sentences but I’ve decided to post short tidbits as often as I can instead of waiting until I have time to correct everything. It helps me to write these things and I hope it helps and encourages you too.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

Laurie :)