Control!

Does your brain ever feel like your email account looks?  You know what I'm talking about.....so much junk, spam, get a discount for this, read this, this is important!!!!  OMG......DELETE!!  Sometimes I just want to delete things as I go along.  Ok....I don't like this....Delete!  I really don't want to talk to you.....Spam!  Oh my gosh.....that's disgusting.....Delete!   I wish it worked that way somedays!  There are those days when I have a hard time trying to distinguish what's important from what isn't.  Or even getting distracted in the middle of what's important for something I really want to do, but I know it can wait, but I really don't want to do what I'm doing right now so I get side tracked.  Maybe I'm a little ADD....I don't know, but I know I'm not alone.  Recently I've been praying that God will give me Grace for the Moment.  That I will stop before reacting to my desires or wants for the moment and take a step back to look at the bigger picture.  Maybe not always my desires or wants but even my attitude and how I'm feeling about a particular situation.  No I may not always like the situations that I'm in by choice or not, but I can most definitely choose how I react to those situations.  I'm gonna go off track here a little bit to give you an idea of what I'm talking about so bare with me.  I love a good surprise....you know those that you never knew about and had no idea anyone was planning something this special for you.....thinking about how much you were gonna just love it!  I love those!  I also love the little surprises like a special gift or flowers etc...  But oh my goodness, when something so small happens, I'm talking about when you have something planned or this idea in your head of how something is going to be and it really doesn't work out that way (I'm a planner.....Okay really that's just my nice word for Control Freak).  Or maybe something extra or different got thrown into the loop.  Those surprises tend to throw me completely off balance.  Sometimes so much so that I need to take a moment to just stop, renavigate my thoughts before I blow!  I recentely had this happen to me.  I was caught off guard and I got a little short and snappy with someone involved and I realized that I was about to chew some fat!  I had to be short with this person so I could walk away and pray!  I prayed for grace to deal with the situation and prayed for fogiveness that I felt the way I felt and for patience because it wasn't how I planned it to be.  Then when I walked away from laying it all down I felt a sense of relief.  Relief because I knew that God was taking care of it, and relief that I actually was able to control my reaction to the situation at hand.  What control......oh I love that word....control!  But I only love it when I'm in it!  So guess what God has told me to do?  I know for some of you reading this will sound so simple and elementary but just humor me ok!  He said....Kami, you cannot control your circumstances or the people in them.....but you can control you and your reaction to the circumstances and the people in them!!  What....What Lord?  You mean I can have a little bit of control.....I'll take it!!  After thinking about all of this, I really don't want to control anyone or anything....that's just too much for anybody to deal with.  Being the control freak that I am, I'm sure I'll forget this converstion with God and try my hand at what I do best.....but I know he will gently nudge me and say....uh hmm....Remember what we talked about....you know....your control issues?  And I'll say ok Lord I'm off it!!  Well maybe it won't go exactly like that, but I'm working on it!!  As I work on these issues I'm seeing little victories here and there in my life, mostly my family.  So with that being said I want to share a scripture thought.

Philippians 1:6
Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you *(me) will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

*I added that so when I read it I will know that it means me not just you!
This right here tells me that it's ok that I'm not perfect, it's okay that I still make the same mistakes.  It's a learning curve.  No I don't believe that we can continue to choose sin over and over because we have this magic Jesus that makes everything ok.....that's not what I'm saying or what this verse says.  It simply means that When we have accepted Christ he begins to do things in our lives that mold us into the person he has called us to be.  I'm not going to be like you, you're not going to be like me.  It takes different personalities and gifts, and I believe if I'm/you're truly seeking Christ and in my/your life he will show me/you who I am/you are called to be through him.