The Chauffeured Life

So many times we say or even think that whatever we are feeling is something that we have no control over.  We can’t help it!  This is just the way I feel! When you put it that way it sounds like something that is definitively decided, a truth regarding our state of mind or circumstances, something that can’t be changed, therefore, it is what it is.

I had a plaque on the wall in my office at work for years that said just that. IT IS WHAT IT IS.  It’s part of the dregs of my career that has now been tossed, taking up space in a corner of my garage, a subliminal reminder when I see it just laying there.

It hung in my office as a manager of the company to remind me, but also to those who reported to me, “that’s it!”  What you see is what you get.  What is said is what it is, this office has spoken, the company has spoken.  Whether we always agree with decisions the company makes, or that I make as a manager of the company, it is what it is.  Deal with it.

As I think about that now I realize what I thought was a humorous way of looking at our situations, decisions that were made, company rules we might not agree with, the message might have been clear for that time, that situation, but not necessarily for our personal lives.  I suppose that is why when I look at that abandoned sign lying on the floor in my garage I cannot think of one way to use it at this point in my life. Or anyone I might want to give it to. It has PRIDE written all over it.

As I grow in my life and in my faith I realize yes, there are many things in our life that we have no control over.  But we do have control over how we feel about them, how we react to them and how we allow them to affect our lives and our thoughts.  And we have control over whether we allow pride to be the deciding factor.

Things, people, events may be just what they are, but the decisions we make about handling them are in our control and we can make sure what we feel about something or someone does not become our reality.

I was “gobsmacked” (an English adjective that I love, meaning utterly astonished; astounded) when I picked up my study of Mark by Lisa Harper this morning and read the title for the lesson this week, Giving Up the “RIGHT” to Ride Shotgun.  That, my friends, is how you live without letting your feelings control you. So I dove right in and had a great time learning how to ride in the backseat of this life and let God do the driving. And the only way you can crawl into the backseat is by leaving your pride on the curb, take it out of the baggage you are carrying, leaving it behind.

Pride is an addiction.  And addictions, whether substances or behaviors, causes us to worship our own desires, our own feelings in an effort to fill that empty hole in the deepest recesses of our being that longs for peace, wisdom, and soundness of mind.  That empty hole is our soul and was meant to be filled by Christ alone.