Replacing Control with Obedience
My husband will be the first to tell you: I am a control freak. I have been this way for as long as I can remember. I like to plan things way in advance and when things get off schedule, I do not handle it well. I utilize the calendar in my phone, we have a giant command center in our kitchen with monthly and weekly calendars, and I have a paper planner on my desk at school. I keep to do lists at home and at work, and have been known to write things on them that I have already finished, just so I can cross it off. I like to have a plan when we travel, and I like to figure out what we’re doing with our free time over the weekend; otherwise, we end up wasting time “not having fun.”
Sounds like a blast, huh?
So when we were ready to start trying to have a baby, I fell into old habits. I read this book that all my friends had read and swore by. All of them had babies to prove that it worked. It was all about tracking your cycle, and it is absolutely rooted in the biology of our reproductive systems, so it makes sense that it works for so many people. I started tracking different aspects of my cycle; I started out doing the basics, just the bare minimum of what was really key to being successful. I had several friends who said that was all they worried about and, boom, they had a baby. But after some time went by, I wasn’t pregnant, so I added some things to my tracker. More months went by, more things got added. By the time we went to see the fertility specialist, I was obsessed. And all those jokes about how much “fun” making a baby is? Yeah, I didn’t find those funny at all.
I didn’t understand. I was tracking everything and following my cycle to the T. Shouldn’t I be pregnant by now? That’s what taking control is all about, right?
But when you start walking through miscarrige and infertility, pretty much nothing is in your control.
Because when I got pregnant the first time, I thought, “Ha! It finally worked! I knew I just needed to have all this stuff perfectly timed for it to work!” And then a week later, I learned first hand how none of that control could prevent a loss.
When we started our first protocol, I felt so much better- we had a plan, we were doing something, we were moving towards a solution. But then months went by, and we changed protocols once, twice, three times. None of that control could guarantee a pregnancy.
With each step of the process, I had to let go of more and more control over the situation. I had to say goodbye to the “normal” ways of getting pregnant, the intimacy with my husband when conceiving a child, the surprise of a pregnancy test and telling people in a cute way, even having my husband just in the same room when I finally did get pregnant through IVF (thanks COVID). Absolutely nothing about how I became a mom was “normal,” and each thing that fell by the wayside was another thing I had to let go control of.
Things aren’t any different in motherhood. My baby came into the world two weeks early, was positioned sunny side up, and has a mama with a very narrow pelvis. So just as with getting pregnant, I had to let go of my “normal” idea of birth as I was wheeled into surgery for an unplanned C-section. In truth, that was an easy one to let go of. After 90 minutes of pushing and absolutely no progress in getting my babe into the world, I was just ready for the doctor to get him out safely. But it still wasn’t what I pictured.
And now, 18 months later, my toddler is testing all my desires to have some semblance of control in my house. His toys and books are everywhere, not just in his bedroom or the playroom I imagined controlling that chaos. I tidy everything up at night when he goes to bed and the next day everything is a disaster again. He is into test boundaries right now, so everything is double and triple baby proofed; looking at that child cabinet lock on my grandmother’s curio cabinet makes me giggle as I imagine the perfectly decorated living room I thought I would have.
I think our anxiety in pregnancy and motherhood after loss causes us to attempt to control every aspect of a situation because we believe we can force the outcome we want if we just follow a certain plan- usually a plan of our own making.
In a way, I know God was preparing me for how little control I would have in motherhood by putting me through some of the hardest moments in my life when I faced miscarriage and infertility. But even with all that experience, it hasn’t fully erased my instinct to take control. I still struggle regularly with obedience to God’s will for my life.
The word “obedience” gets a bad rap sometimes. It’s seen as this weak personality trait that only people who aren’t confident in their identity have. In the eyes of society, obedience just means you aren’t individual enough to stand up for yourself, and that it’s just easier for you to bow to someone else’s desires. But that is not at all what obedience means in God’s economy.
Funnily enough, the first time the word “obey” shows up in Scripture is in a story that is riddled with humans trying to take matters into their own hands to control an outcome. In Genesis 27, Isaac (the son God promised Abraham when he was 100 years old) has now reached old age himself, so his eyesight is fading. He calls the eldest of his twin sons, Esau, and asks him to go hunt game and make him something delicious to eat so that he can give Esau his blessing before he dies.
Rebekah, Isaac’s wife and Esau’s mother, overhears this conversation and goes to the younger twin, Jacob. In the King James, she says, “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee” (verse 8).
The Hebrew word for “obey” here has tons of definitions: “hear, listen to, hear with attention, understand, give heed, yield to, cause to hear, hear with implication of obedience, discern” - and this is just a selection of what jumped out at me. It’s intriguing to me that “obedience” is tied so closely to versions of hearing. We cannot obey someone if we aren’t hearing or listening to what they say. Even Rebekah’s word choice here is “obey my voice,” which would require hearing and listening.
Rebekah’s plan is to have Jacob take some of their goats and she will cook them into a delicious meal. Jacob will dress in Esau’s clothes and put goatskin on his hands and neck, since Esau is hairy, and he will take the food into his father so that he can get the blessing.
This plan works, hook, line, and sinker. Isaac blesses Jacob, thinking it’s Esau.
How does this story display the idea of control, you may be wondering. Well, back in Genesis 25:23, Rebekah was pregnant with these twin sons. They were wrestling in her womb, and in her discomfort, she cried out to God to know what was going on. His response was to tell her about the two sons she was carrying, and He promised that the older would serve the younger.
Essentially, what happens here fulfills what God has promised, that Jacob the younger son will be superior over his older brother Esau, even though that is not traditionally how blessings and inheritance are passed down.
The problem, though, is that Rebekah took matters into her own hands in order to force this outcome. She didn’t wait for God’s plan to fulfill it. She didn’t allow His timing for things to unfold. She devised a deceitful plan and helped Jacob take the blessing according to their own timing because they didn’t want to wait for God’s plan anymore.
Thankfully, there are much better examples of obedience in Scripture for us to follow. The person we are meant to emulate, who shows how to make sure our obedience is directed towards God and not our own desires, is Jesus. Paul describes His obedience beautifully in Philippians 2:8: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death- even death on a cross!” (NIV).
In this letter, Paul is encouraging the Philippians to have the same mindset as Jesus. He was God by nature, but He never used that to His advantage when He walked the earth in human flesh. Instead, He became a servant to all mankind and, in obedience to His Father, He went to the cross to die for our sins. In Luke 22:42, Jesus prays that the cup- His approaching death- be taken from Him. But then He follows it up by saying, “not my will but Yours be done.”
Jesus, in his humanness, doesn’t want to face that death. But He also knows that God’s plan is bigger than those human desires, and He recognizes that His death will save all mankind. So He walks obediently to the cross and submits to God’s will. The Greek word Paul uses for “obedient” in Philippians 2:8 means “giving ear, attentively listening, submissive.” Again we see that, in order to submit to obedience, listening is involved. We must be able to discern God’s will if we want to be obedient to it.
If we are to hear what God has to say to us so that we can be obedient to His direction, we first have to silence any other voices that are trying to get in our way. That includes our own voice, but it also means eliminating the lies of Satan from our thoughts. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells us how we do this: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV).
We have to tear down the arguments we create for ourselves that say our way is better. We have to banish every lie from Satan that sets itself in opposition to God’s Word. The Greek word here is a version of the word used in Philippians, but it has some very specific definitions that I believe can help us in this work:
“Obedience to someone’s counsel, obedience shown in observing the requirements of Christianity” - If we want to be obedient to God’s will we have to hear His counsel and requirements for our faith. The only way to recognize that voice is to be in His Word as much as we can, so we can recognize the difference between Truth and lies.
“Obedience with which Christ followed out the saving purpose of God,” specifically in His suffering and death - If we want to learn how to be obedient to God’s will, all we have to do is look to the example Jesus set for us. He walked the path before us, and He lives inside of us, so we just need to look to Him for the ability to follow in His footsteps.
Obedience is hard. It feels so contrary to everything in our human nature. And in truth, it is impossible to get perfectly right. That’s why Jesus had to be obedient for us and face crucifixion, so that everytime we turn from obedience and take control for ourselves, we can turn back to God and receive His forgiveness. But Jesus’s death also means that He is able to give us the strength to be obedient, if only we would ask Him. This is a scary thought, asking for the obedience necessary to follow God’s plan instead of your own. But when we replace control with this obedience, we are able to release everything to God so we can joyfully follow His plan. And letting go of control, no matter how scary, is also such a relief. We don’t have to do any of this life on our own. We don’t really have to do anything to make things happen. We can let God have the control and believe that He will work everything out for our good.
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