
I’m Trying to Control Myself from Being a Control Freak
This is my first article. Ever. On Medium no less. So, I’m a tad nervous about how well it will turn out. You see I’m a guy with a lot of emotions and a lot of thoughts. I guess you can say that at 45 years old I’m still working things out in my emotions, relationships, career, and life in general. At 45 years old you’d think I had gotten my s#*t together. I wish I did. And I beat myself up for that ALL THE TIME.
This past weekend I was spending some nice quality time with my kids. At one point I became agitated by something my daughter did and yelled at her. I felt very guilty about that. She’s my daughter in that she’s also highly sensitive and emotional. Why couldn’t I have let it go? Why did I have to yell at her? What was driving me deep down inside.
I think that as my nature being very emotional, somewhat spiritual, creative, loving, and sensitive, I let my tendency to need to fix everything override appropriate reaction. I so badly wanted to provide a loving atmosphere for my children that when one of exactly those children did something that distracted from my “Master Plan” I got upset and did the exact opposite of what my initial “Master Plan” was all about.
I think as human beings we do that all the time. Most of us have in our deep desires and even nature to provide, be loving, accepting, caring, and nurturing to those around us especially our families. Yet, we are humans with animalistic tendencies as well which if left at free reign will end up being just as cruel as the beasts of the jungle if not worse. We as human being can take our physical attributes, our animalistic tendencies and behaviors and train them, tame them to serve a bigger and higher purpose. To serve others. To provide for our families. To nurture. And if you are religious to channel all of this in service of God.

I follow this Christian blog and this article written a few weeks ago really resonated with me then and especially now over these past few days. It’s entitled “A Simple Ladybug: Messenger of God Himself”. The author, Jill Cain writes how she realized that God sends messages through various messengers to us. He has all types of messages but one really popular one is as she so eloquently writes “Stop trying to take care of things. I got this”. That one line sums up my life and I’m sure many other lives as well. We have to remind ourselves as much as we can to be able to let things go. Whether it’s God you believe in or not we can still learn from the universe. We don’t need to fix everything that seems broken. Not every on of our plans will be so master and changes can be welcome. That’s just the way life is. Things happen.
I think to myself, now I’m all good. I’m not going to yell at my kids anymore. I’m going to get my s*^t together. But I’d be kidding myself. The moment I start thinking this way I’m thinking that I can fix everything including myself and my troubled emotions. I think I can get my life in order. That’s not to say we shouldn't take appropriate responsibility and try our best. We just have to remember that simply trying our best and to accept when things will change on us, distract us, happen, and don’t go our way.
Do you think God disguises Himself as a ladybug to just stop by, visit, and see how we’re doing?