Have you ever just looked back on your life and remembered how you had your future all planned out? If you have anything in common with a control freak like me, you would understand. There are different kinds of control freaks, mind you. My own personal need for control goes to the point where I believe there is a specific order/plan that things need to be in, and if that order isn’t followed, I come in and try and save it from potential chaos (even if it isn’t really heading in that direction), and restore it to the proper order I believe it should be. In my opinion, every event needs to be planned out: family vacations, date nights, time with friends, etc. and kept to a schedule (despite the fact that I am never on time to anything).

You see, nobody told me that my life had to happen in any particular order except the typical: school, college, career, but my vivid mind had decided on a more detailed plan than just those simple three steps. By the time high school came around, I had grown into quite the hopeless romantic and I attended a small church where a lot of married couples had met at a very young age with life all figured out. So I had the idea that my life plan should be: when I get to high school, find my 'soul mate,' go to college, graduate as a nurse, and then get married. Now my life plan had much more detail than that but for your sake, this is the basic over view of my plan for my life.

Going to church, I was always told that God had a plan for my life but had assumed that His plan was always the same as mine. So I had set out to complete my life plan, in the order that I was convinced it was supposed to be in, and assumed that God would just provide what I wanted, when I wanted it.

I am now in my second year of college, and I can tell you that I have officially lost control over my life. After going over and over, slightly editing my “perfect” plan as I went, I realize that I am no closer to finding my “soul mate” nor figuring out what I want to do as a career than I was back in high school. Over the four years of high school and after my first year in college, I have learned a handful of truths as to why this plan has failed me.

1.You can plan it all to a T, but there aren't guarantees it’ll happen.

Starting college, I felt like I should know exactly what career I should go into, which meant I would have to learn how to actually focus and study hard. As the year went on, I had gone from a determined nursing major to a lost child not knowing what exactly where I was wanting to go in life. Grades were not where I wanted them to be, and my relationships with people were suffering. The amount of anxiety I felt was on the rise, just like the empty ramen noodle packages piling in my trash can. My plan, the one I used to measure my success on, was not working in any aspect. This was the start of losing control, and boy did God start using that as a tool in my life at that point. When my control started slipping, I ran full speed to something that I had grown up with but never really truly believing. I ran to God, praying that He would guide me into a direction that would help heal my aching soul, still clinging to the hope that my plan for my life will still be successful. As you might have guessed, it didn’t go the way I had planned it to.

2. When you pray for guidance, you only THINK you understand what that looks like.

Praying for guidance, or as Hillsong put it, taking you “deeper than your feet could ever wander,” is an easy prayer to pray. I can pray it just as easily as I can rap the intro to “It’s Tricky” by Run D.M.C, but I never really understood what guidance looks like. When you think guidance, you might think of a parent nudging a toddler towards a safer area and away from sharp corners. But if you are still struggling to let go of the control you had built your whole identity upon, like yours truly, then that was not what guidance felt like.

Now, my relationship with God has grown exponentially since this point in time, but guidance I had received felt more … breath taking. Imagine a stubborn girl asking her Father to help her change the rug she was standing on because she realized it was’t in good condition anymore. He tells her to get off the rug so he can help change it out, so she asks where to move next. Every time he tells her a different direction to move in, she keeps complaining and getting more upset that nothing is happening but remains unmoved and on the rug because she’s afraid of what way He will change things. So, finally, he rips the carpet out from underneath her and the wind is knocked from her, but her father has started to work on the rug as she's getting up.

OK, some might not agree with this analogy, but let me explain. I was wanting things to change, but unwilling to let go of the control that I had clung to for all those years. I wouldn’t listen, and remained unmoving despite my constant prayers for change. Yeah, it hurt when God changed the rug (my life), but it’s my pride that was knocked out of me, nothing that caused literal physical pain.

God had taken some people out of my life, He has brought new relationships into my life, and has shown me that I need to step up in other areas in my life. I asked for guidance and for Him to change my life but, when I wouldn’t let go of that control and uncertainty that came with change, He ripped it out from underneath me, and I have never been more grateful that He did.

3. He does open doors, but you have to be brave enough to walk through them.

After God started working on changing my world, and I realize that I have to learn to really let go of that control. The old rug was gone and now I have to learn to trust that the new rug I asked for would turn out okay. So while the rug is being worked on, I asked for doors to open for new opportunities. Another thing about losing control, when opportunity is presented to you, it’s going to be outside of your comfort zone because you have no control over what the outcome of that opportunity provides, and that scares any control freak. With no absolute certainty of what the results of this opportunity will produce, and no control over what exactly will happen, you have two choices: trust that something good will come out of it, or fight a battle to try and regain control.

I am trusting.

I still struggle constantly to keep control of my life, to stick to the plan I had created so long ago. If I continue to hold onto that plan, it will only cause more pain and confusion along with frustration and anger with myself as well as God. Why hold on to something so harmful, that shows little positive results?