I’m an enneagram 6. I overthink. I doubt. I like when I’m in control.

I love consistency and routine. I also like to make plans and I’m not a fan of them being messed up.

Control and surrender don’t work together. They physically don’t belong together. You can’t be in control and also be completely surrendered to something else. It’s literally one or the other. To be completely surrendered is all in, it is not “okay, I’m going to surrender all but these little few things because I want to be able to control them.”

I had the privilege and joy of getting to help serve at my church’s Encounter Weekend these last couple days. I love getting involved because Encounter (or D-Now as we called it) had such an impact on my life when I was in the youth group. As I told my group of girls, this weekend wasn’t just about the students but it was speaking to everyone there. Our speaker, Matt Daniels, came out of the gate on Friday night stomping on my toes and didn’t stop until he finished his last sermon Sunday morning.

Matt made so many great points and I’m surprised there wasn’t smoke coming from my pen because I couldn’t write fast enough. He was spitting truth faster than I could write it down. But as many things he said and as much as it resonated in me, there was one word he focused on that hit me to my core.

Surrender.

The definition of surrender is “to cease resistance and submit to authority” or “to yield power, control, or possession.”

And y’all, just typing that gave me chills but also made me want to break out into hives. Looking back on the last few weeks of Bible Recap, my Sunday School lessons that I’ve taught and been taught, and sermons that have been preached there have been some overarching themes that I am starting to see.

1. God’s timing is always perfect.
2. Being a control freak can get us into a lot of trouble
3. We have to be willing to surrender and surrender it all.

God’s timing has been compared to lots of things but my favorite one is the one I heard today, we want God’s timing to work like a microwave where we have instant gratification. But more often than not, God’s timing will be like a slow cooker. We have to be willing to wait to taste and see all that God has for us in our life. I have a sweatshirt with a quote from the movie “The Princess Diaries” that says “A Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early.” I love that quote in the context of that movie, but when dealing with my own timeline and my earthly selfishness, I’m not so much a fan. But who in the world do I think I am that either 1) I should RUSH GOD or 2) take things into my own hands because I think I can do better than God’s plan for me.

Being a control freak often means that we are taking things into our own hands regardless of what God is telling us to do because foolishly, we think we know better than GOD. Like how dumb is that?

Surrendering is hard. I always picture surrender as waving a white flag on a battlefield. No one wants to admit defeat, but yet at some point they have to wave the flag anyway.

There are lots of things in life that we wait for. There are things that we may never get or know the answer to why we had to wait so long.

There are things I’m waiting for. Being very transparent, I’m waiting for a husband. I’m waiting for that man of God that my Creator has made for me. Being even more transparent, I have not been patient. I have not surrendered. I have dated guys that I know God did not place in my life but rather I went out and found for myself because I was not being patient. And guess what? All those relationships ended miserably because I wasn’t with who God has for me. For YEARS I have taken things into my own hands and have been actively searching for my husband, and I have never fully given it to God. The sentence “you’ll find him when you least expect it” has annoyed me for years because I’ve always been searching. I’ve been on and off dating apps for years. It’s been a vicious cycle. Download the dating app, get irritated by the quality of guys on the app, delete the app, wait a few weeks, and repeat. Literally for YEARS.

So, here I am waving that white flag from the battlefield of my life. This morning when I left church, I didn’t even make it home. I deleted them all, all THREE of them..yes 3..I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that…off my phone. This time for good. I need accountability for that. I need someone to hold me to that. Because those dating apps have been my hold on my future relationship/marriage that I have been so unwilling to let go of and fully surrender that aspect of my life to God. My God has my plan written for me and it’s beyond time for me to let it go, fully surrender, and see what the Maker of the Universe has written for me.