On being out of control

I'm convinced that one of our greatest fears -- behind public speaking, if the hype on that one is true -- is to not be in control. While this fear often goes unrecognized, I believe it is at the root of nearly every obsession in our lives, in one way or another, and drives more decision making than we would ever like to admit. I could write volumes on this idea.

The appropriate recognition and exercise of control is one of the keys to an emotionally healthy life. The fruitless attempt to control things that are really beyond our control drives most familial dysfunctions, and a failure to control our own actions properly drives most addictive behaviors. In my experience, these two unhealthy approaches to life -- the attempt to control what we cannot and the inability to control what we should -- frequently coexist. It would be worth spending some more time on that, but this post isn't going there.

I always thought that once our children grew into adults my wife and I would have almost universal control over our schedules. I envisioned having the kids and grandkids over regularly, babysitting occasionally, but mostly having our time to ourselves. That has happened, to a degree; I generally have time to cycle a couple days a week (in season), and we don't have to make sure our kids are taken care of as we make whatever plans we're interested in. Still, I envisioned that most weekends the two of us would have most of our time to ourselves.

What a foolish dream that is turning out to be!

On Friday night, our youngest called to ask if we could watch her two (18 months and 1 month) for a few hours. My wife and I had an understanding that we wouldn't babysit Saturday because of planned activities Sunday morning at church, so seeing as the rest of the weekend was looking open, we agreed.

Ahh, but on Saturday afternoon, our oldest called us from the hospital. She'd been admitted again for the chronic health problem she's been dealing with since she was 12 or so. Her youngest two (3½ and a young 6) needed someone to stay with while Dad worked. In such circumstances, we wouldn't say no unless it was clear that they were taking advantage of us rather than using a more appropriate option. The kids finally got picked up around 7 Sunday evening.

Our grandkids are a great blessing. They're mostly well-behaved. We're glad to be in a position to spend time with them. Still, come Saturday, it was important for us to make the decision to watch them, to realize that we were choosing to have them over, to avoid feeling out of control. The truth is that we could have put our foot down and refused to help out, or begrudingly agreed and thus felt put out. But in these circumstances, either of these options would have meant choosing to be other than the people we want to be.

Control over our circumstances is an illusion. We have absolutely no control over our daughters' health. But recognizing the control we have over the decisions we make in response to our circumstances, and exercising that control appropriately, is essential. We were able to be patient and loving with our grandchildren, to respond to them effectively all weekend, since we didn't feel out of control, because we recognized we'd made the best decision -- even if it was an obvious one.

Ahh, but when our youngest asked us to babysit again tonight (Sunday), after the weekend we've had? We had the insight to recognize that we needed to choose otherwise.