The Power of Doing Nothing

I look up and realize that the situation I sought to resolve is spiraling in the wrong direction. The complexities and the view of me in it are worsening. Instead of resolving, it gets worse. The outcomes are odd and confusion. The resolution feels further away.

My intuition is to jump in and fix it, proactively communicate, say all the things I held back in wisdom, and make clear that the direction this just spun into is not my first choice. Control. What I want to do is control the situation. I want to make it understand me, work for me, and serve me. In reality, control does nothing for me except make me personally responsible for whatever happens next.

Control is far less safe than it presents itself to be. It takes our hands and wraps them around something that only God should be holding. There, our hands get dirty and we become responsible for maintaining and protecting something that is far above our pay grade. Next, we burn out because controlling that thing was never our assignment in the first place. We learn the hard way that we cannot control anyone, and the fruit of someone else’s decisions are simply not ours to manage.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing.

Sometimes things do get worse before they get better.

Sometimes things have to break before they can heal properly.

Letting go is painful, but it may also be good. Self-control is an enormous amount of work, but let’s remember that it is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Without it, we are operating outside of the Holy Spirit’s leadership. With it, we are enforcing a place of trust in our heart of heart’s.

Trust in God looks like something. It looks like resisting control, and letting God be God. It looks like shedding the self-defense mechanisms and sitting still. It looks accepting that we are misunderstood and we may be falsely accused. It looks like letting God defend us and prove that we are lovable. It looks like waiting instead of racing, releasing instead of gripping, and staying present instead of disappearing. It also looks like accepting the fact that we are not in control of the situation, but we are in it. The tension of these two realities host an incredible space to grow in trusting God.

Friend, this is not yours to fix.

Stop trying to control it.

Your strength right now is in your self-control.

Hold back.

Hang tight.

Be quiet.

He’s got this.

Written July 22nd, 2022