one thing you can do when it feels like control has been ripped from your grasp
Living in Haiti brought all kinds of challenges. Learning how to stand on my own two feet in another culture was a lesson all in itself. One that was much harder than I anticipated!
I am a giver– In other words, I give way long before I stand firm. Literally. In Haiti, people will push (without malice) and crowd and my tendency is to take three steps back and give whatever they ask. At times, this left me standing at the side of the road while my husband accidentally drove off without me.
Oh, how he scolded when this would happen. “Hold your ground,” he would say in frustration, “tell them no! and don’t let go of the vehicle.”
Nice idea but not very applicable when it goes against the very grain of my existence.
Finally, he gave up lecturing me and turned on them. I was slightly behind in my Creole-speaking abilities but I caught the gist, You are all personally responsible to make sure my wife is taken care of when we are going places. You will not push her, squish her or otherwise cause her to move away from a secure place. She is my WIFE. I will not drive your ambulance or run your errands if I have to worry about her being knocked off the vehicle.
Turns out that worked pretty well.
Willim and Arnold, teenage boys who hung around the mission regularly, made it their personal responsibility to take care of me on trips. They stood on both sides and pushed others away. I thought they were a little rude. My husband thanked them and actually paid them money for the fine job they did.
But even I hit a cutoff point eventually.
It was during church (which grated me to the core) that someone walked by my kitchen window, sliced through my screen and stole… my dish soap.
And I cried. Huge blistering tears.
I could try and defend my over-reaction… after all, it was rather hard to come by dish soap. The Haitians in that area use mostly ivory bar soap to wash their dishes and it was this one luxury that I insisted on. And trust me, I didn’t insist on much! It was this silly thing that kept Haiti from being completely foreign and difficult.
And, we didn’t have money to buy more. We kept ourselves on a strict budget and gave away all the extra of the allowance the mission provided for food and monthly expenses. I know the Haitians could not understand that we were literally living broke, our personal income barely covering the expenses back home, but I sure knew it.
But the truth is that it was just dish soap.
Somewhere in the middle of my tears, I felt the Lord speak. He just asked this question but it left me wrapped tight inside.
Tasha, why are you so injured by this event?
It took awhile for me to understand the reason. It wasn’t the dish soap, as nice as it was to have it. It wasn’t the inability to buy more for the next two weeks. It was the feeling of lost control.
I had stiffened my back at being pushed out of the vehicle more times than I could count. I was used to the eyes watching me every minute, even while I was in my own house. I adapted well to the climate, to the social changes… but this broke a line that I had unknowingly set: this thief stole more than just my dish soap, he or she had stolen my ability to control what was sitting in my own house.
And with this realization came a deeper, truer, more difficult reality:
I was withholding control from God. Still.
I had left my home, gave up my job and my friends and my family– claiming so strongly that I was giving all control to Christ– but I was still withholding. Still clinging tight to my rights to control my own life.
And there is only one thing to do when your eyes are opened to such startling facts:
Wipe the tears of self-pity and kneel.
Of all the lessons I learned while living in Haiti, I think this was the most practical.
I lose control of life all the time. It is constantly, repeatedly, ripped from my grasp. Each and every time my mind flashes back to my sobs over dish soap and the feeling of those tile floors when I knelt in my kitchen and surrendered again.
Because the only way to regain control is to surrender.
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It is always the simple things that speak the most truth to our souls 🙂
recently bought a $5 bottle of dish soap. it smells yummy but every time I use it I feel wasteful and God speaks to me..again about being a steward over my finances. so He teaches us, and my belief is confirmed : work in the kitchen is a ministry and we are ministered to as we yield in the washing of dishes, prepping and cooking of food etc. will appreciate my $5 dish soap a little more and when it is gone will not replace it. and no it doesn’t work any better than the $1.79 bottle.
thanks for like on my 1st five minute friday post…Broken. your words of encouragement are a blessing. happy resurrection weekend to you!
Wonderful application from dish soap, Natasha. 🙂 The core of our overreactions run much deeper then first impressions. Surrender –the only answer.
Control…I feel that I surrender it again and again only to find that it has taken root in my heart again. Thank you for your honesty this morning.
Oh, do I ever understand!
I’ve gotten to know this word lately…. SURRENDER. And I like it now, it’s so much easier than fighting or holding back. Thanks Natasha! 🙂 ~Amy
I feel like there are seasons for this word, for sure. And they are always growing seasons.
Haha, God asks things that are so very counter intuitive, doesn’t He? “Want control? Then give it up.” Um….. come again? 😀 But really, it’s true. When we keep on grasping for that (imaginary) control, we feel the lack of control all the more. But when we surrender it and “let” Him be in control (as if He wasn’t already…), everything is so much more… I don’t know. Right. Still. Controlled. Even when it doesn’t feel or look that way.
It’s crazy how many layers there is to this, isn’t it? It seems that just when I think I’ve really surrendered everything, God opens up a whole ‘nother area, and I’m left going–“How much more is there???” A lot apparently. I’m glad, though, that He doesn’t stop with the layers we can see. He gets all the way down, to the stuff we don’t even know about…
Thanks for the reminder to surrender. 🙂
A favorite writer of mine is A.W. Tozer… he wrote a whole book about the “paradox of the Christian faith” where it is our defeat that brings us victory.
I am reading “Knowledge of the Holy” by him right now! 🙂 What is the book you were referring to called?
I think it might be titled The Pursuit of God… but I could be wrong on that. I read it when we were in Haiti and those couple lines are the ones that stuck with me. 🙂
Oh okay, I read that one too. Apparently I didn’t remember… I’ll have to look. 🙂
I’m sorry, that was wrong. I went and hunted it up… the title is “God’s Pursuit of Man” (the prequel to The Pursuit of God) and it was originally published under “Divine Conquest”.
Ohh, that makes sense. 🙂 I want to read that one too…
Wipe the tears of self pity and kneel. Wow. Wow, wow, wow… Thank you sooo much, my dearly beloved friend. .
I think I might need to cross-stitch this on a pillow. 🙂
Oh, I get the pushing thing! Personal bubbles are much smaller in this culture, and I still remember standing politely to one side in the open-air market one Friday (busiest day of the week), waiting for a break in the stream of humanity. Eventually it dawned on me that there wouldn’t be one…and I’d better start pushing!
About the punchline of this post: Whew. yes. THANK you for writing it!
Yes, I think America is the only place that (sometimes!) caters to my personality. Probably it was someone like me who invented stoplights. 😉 (after sitting at an intersection for five hours, no doubt.)