The Squooshy

Control. It’s more than the torturous top some madman pantyhose salesman invented (I assume) to make my flab poke out above my skirt like biscuits freed from an opened can. And probably why a woman invented spanx. I mean. If you’re gonna squeeze the charmin, it’s just going to migrate. So you’ve gotta be committed. Go all in: full body spanx!

But a) my biscuit needs may not be your biscuit needs, and b) I digress.  Control is what we all want in our lives. 

But it’s a myth. 

I mean. We control some things. I control how much iPad time my 6 year old gets. I control the final draft of our quarterly reports at work. I control how my weight watchers points are allocated (dinner last night may or may not have been 2 glasses of wine, 2 oz of goat cheese and 4 crackers. And that points allocation decision may or may not have been sooooo worth going to bed with a growling tummy). But, ultimately,  I’m not in control of everything–of many things. The election results. The days my hair wants to cooperate.  The amount of time it takes the guy in front of me to put his toll in the toll collector ONE COIN AT A FREAKING TIME. How quickly my teenager is willing to embrace what I’m trying to teach him. The heartache of people very dear to me. 

Also. Did I mention election results?

There is much we can’t control. And that really really sucks sometimes. My friend whose loved one is in harms way because of a bad relationship–It hurts her to watch it happening. It scares the Buhjeezus out of her. She hasn’t been able to fix it. Yet. But she tries. She goes to great lengths to help her loved one. She can’t control it but she won’t stop trying and that is a testament to her character. My friend whose child is facing health issues–the kind that come up out of the blue and change what feels like everything in your life. She watches her child face something she surely would like to take from him. To control. But she can’t. She helps. She educates. She advocates like the fiercest of mama bears. And she underscores all of it with lessons for her child in faith and persistence. 

And my sister. My amazing, beautiful, sister. *sigh*  She’s got what amounts to a colonizing alien in her chest and a shitty, shitty deal. That’s the truth of it. And it makes me so…angry. It makes us all angry sometimes. None of us know how to help, because we can’t control that either. And she faces it.  Maybe she questions it. I know she hates it. Maybe she cries when no one is looking. And she is hell bent on what my kids used to say when they were toddlers:

I do by myself!

She is THE most stubborn solo-goer. Ever. But. Want to know what every conversation with her about her health includes?  Every. Single. One.  

1. Her desire to be pleasing and faithful to God through this journey
2. Her insistence that her kids needs not only are met but come first

She’s been apart from her husband throughout a lot of this alien-chest-invasion. Not because he’s a bad dude or because they have a bad marriage.  But because his work puts him 8 hours away from her and she won’t relocate while her kids are still in school. She doesn’t want to be the reason they get uprooted. How about them apples?  So. Miss “do-all-by-myself” is sometimes by herself when she really really needs someone. And she does not want to need someone. But she can’t control that either. 

And therein lies the beauty of that which we cannot control. We do our best. We don’t sit on our laurels. We try. We advocate. We sometimes b*tch about how unfair it is. But sometimes we have to trust. Forcibly. Sometimes we have to reach out and depend on others. We have to rely on our faith to pull us through.   And in that lost control…sometimes you get to see real beauty. You get to see your kids changing and becoming stronger as they adapt. You get to see your family rally around you. You get to see new and renewed relationships blossom. You get to be taught. And sometimes…..if you are looking….you get to see God move.