Have you ever thought of being “out of control” as a good thing?
Fear and anxiety can keep us up wrapped up pretty tight. My fearful younger self worked very hard to bring order into our family life by anticipating any possible problem and controlling every detail. This was my way of keeping us all safe. I was afraid of being out of control. I’d had enough of that growing up and I wanted a more stable life for my children.
One of the ways that I strove for safety was through my involvement in the evangelical church. Evangelical Christianity came along when I was a teenager, like a lifeboat in a storm. They seemed to have all the answers to life’s difficult questions. And they were happy and fun and had purpose in their lives – give me some of that please!
Later on, the Church promised to keep my children safe, if I would just keep them involved. Awesome – sign me up! That worked well when my kids were young, but eventually my teenaged children, and my husband, refused accept the prepackaged answers to questions of creation, sexual orientation, sin and judgment, Heaven and Hell (i.e. being “saved”). They would no longer come to church. My carefully constructed Safety Plan began to crumble.
Eventually I would leave too. It was not easy. I was losing my entire worldview as well as my community. Instead of having the answer to everything, I had no answers. Well…I had one answer: “I don’t know.”
I stepped into the void, crying, “I DON’T KNOOOOOOW!”
I jumped off the cliff, and learned to fly.
“I don’t know…I am out of control…I am free…!”
Crones' Chronicles 
There is something freeing and opening about the mind that can accept that I do not know. The shackles of ideology are lifted and the bird can fly. At times a community can serve our needs but when things change we learn to move on for further growth. I am grateful for this sharing.
LikeLike