Confusion or Control?

‘Confusion will be my epitaph,

as I crawl a cracked and broken path,

if we make it we can all sit back and laugh,

but I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying’

(King Crimson, ‘Epitaph’)

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend, and as we shared something of the recent difficulties to which I have already referred, he reminded me that – many years ago – we had both been part of a discussion group where we were each asked to write what we imagined our own epitaph might be. He remembered that mine had been ‘Lost without his lists’!

It remains true to this day. I am a compulsive list maker. I have 'to do' lists for everything and anything, and without these lists something approaching chaos results... or, at least, that is my fear. I certainly get very flustered and confused (‘Confusion will be my epitaph’?).

I am sufficiently self-aware to know that my list making is in part an attempt to remain in control. I have an unhealthy tendency towards control-freakery. This may be (in part at least) why I have found these last months so extremely stressful; I have been anything but ‘in control’. This has been an utterly terrifying place for me to be... but perhaps not a wholly bad place. I know that I need to be challenged to let go, to die to the illusion that I can control much (if anything).

As the crisis that befell us was beginning to unfold, I said to someone that I did not know and could not imagine how it would all resolve and that the not knowing made me very anxious (another symptom of control-freakery, I reckon).

She suggested to me that I might want to choose to abandon myself to not-knowing.

Abandon myself to not knowing...

What a difficult thing for me to do! And yet, I have had no choice. I did not know; I could not maintain control; there were no lists to be made.

Frequently that old saying came back to mind; ‘Let go and let God’.

As sayings go, it is a tad too trite and simplistic for my liking, and – as I have said in previous posts – for a long time it seemed and felt like God was doing nothing at all. So letting go felt like only chaos and confusion. But then it occurred to me that it may be to these very experiences – apparent chaos and confusion, along with not knowing – that I needed to abandon myself.

And here I am now able to discern something of God’s action in it all and able to glimpse something of his presence. So perhaps I was not abandoning myself to chaos and confusion alone. I was also abandoning myself to God.

For me, as things begin to resolve themselves and the path ahead looks clearer and the journey beyond this dark time seems to open up before us, the challenge will be not to revert to vain attempts at re-taking control, but to abandon myself to not knowing and to God.

Perhaps fewer lists would be a start...