Day 2: Under control

I wrote 1,758 words yesterday for national novel writing month. That doesn't even include what I wrote on here for national blog posting month (NaBloPoMo). Also, last night I joined a group on NaBloPoMo for Christian writers, and started a new group as well.

Hello, my name is Liz (and/or Elizabeth), and I have ADD. It's a beautiful thing. Sometimes.

Anyway, back to the novel writing craziness: I calculated how many words, on average, one would have to write each day to make it to 50,000 words by the end of November: 1,667 words per day. Thus, my goal is to write at least 1,700 words each day, so I'm right on track.

Speaking of calculations, I've started tutoring one of my neighbors in Algebra II. It has been, like, 10 years since I've had any sort of math class, so I told her I might not be the best tutor when she asked, but that I would give it a try.

So, this week I've been (rapidly) reintroduced to the world of algebra and calculus as I've been tutoring her. It was actually kind of fun to do the graphs and word problems and all that good stuff, and to teach someone else how to do it. I forgot how satisfying it can be to solve a multi-step problem and know I got the exact right answer. That's a great feeling for me.

Algebra appeals to my inner control-freak.

I mean, there's a right answer at the end of every problem. A solution that is clear and concrete - all I have to do is follow the steps and apply the correct formulas. It's so straightforward. It makes logical sense.

Often I have wished life could be that predictable, that formulaic. No risk. No unknown outcomes. Complete control to know where I'm headed and exactly how to get there.

But that's not reality. Maybe for an algebra problem, but not for this messy thing called life. And, yet, many times I've tried to make it safe and predictable. I've tried to make my five- or 10-year plans set in stone.

There's a Woody Allen quote that says, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans."

The need for this kind of control, this demand to know exactly where life is headed and to be assured that it won't be scary or painful or messy, is contrary to following God's will. For someone to let go of this delusion of control, it would require complete faith in God's plan and timing, even though to do so is risky and involves uncertainty about the path ahead, and there may be more heartache and struggles than expected.

A few weeks ago, while doing my thing on the elliptical at the gym, I was listening to a podcast of a Rob Bell sermon that addresses this quest for control. Here is a snippet of what he said:

"Essentially, the lie is that life is like an X-Y graph. . . . The ultimate lie is if you do A, B, and C, then of course God will do A, B, and C, and you’ll be fine. Like, all you have to do is trust Jesus, and you won’t have to go through any heartache because he wants you happy and wealthy. And these lies are deep within us that this is how the world works...

"You cannot control what’s going to happen to some of the relationships around you. You cannot control where the attacks are going to come from. You cannot control what dreams may, in fact, blow up in your face. You cannot control exactly where Provision or Guidance is going to come.

"But you can control the kind of person you are becoming. You can control what’s going on in your heart. You can control whether you’re the kind of person who is moving from indifference to compassion. Whether you move from having a hard heart to having a heart that beats for the things that God’s heart beats for…

“There’s this sense that, man, life could have been so much easier, but it hasn’t gone that way. It went a different way. Man, there’s so many places where a straight shot would have saved so much time and heartache, and yet, instead, life did this other thing and it twisted and turned and curved, and it’s not what I planned. And I think about the relationships that have blown up, and the dreams that just kind of faded away…there was a much, much shorter route, but I’ve ended up taking a much longer route.

"And yet, I wouldn’t be who I am, and you wouldn’t be who you are, if we had taken the shorter route. It’s all the twists and turns that have shaped you. So the question is: ‘Am I responding and becoming the kind of person God intends me to be?’ Because there are some things we can only learn from the curves and the twists and the bends.

"There are some things, if everything was perfect and fine, we would never learn, and we would end up so shallow and trite and not tuned in to the bigger issues.