Monday, March 29, 2004

Control

      Control: our need to make other people think and behave as we want for them to as if it is our God-given right. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to focus on trying to control someone else's behavior and there is no real way to win.

     During a long awaited for and much needed conversation with a close friend on the phone last night, (OK it's only been a week but it felt like a month.) I found myself defending how much control we have over the choices that our children make. Was that really me talking?

     More than anything I want for my kids (17,20 & 21)to be strong and independentand in control of their own lives. So why do I still feel so responsible for the direction that Mandy (still at home) travels each day and the choices that she makes?

     The need to control can really weigh me down and is often just one more excuse for putting off those things that I should be doing to make my own life a better place. Sometimes it's really hard to know what I can change and what I can't but I am working on it.

     Oh yea the picture at the top is a drawing of Mandy that we had made at the South Florida Fair recently. That night I rode the rides and rollarcoasters with Mandy for the first time in 15 years.

 

     If you have any comments on things you try to hard to control or way's you have learned to relinquish control, leave them. I would really like to hear from you.

 

 

    

 

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have a strong sense of right and wrong and feel so out of control when others make what I perceive are wrong choices.   I cringe because I would handle things differently, so I have to learn to release what I can't control.  It's not that I try to control it, more that I'm bothered by what others do, which in turn causes stress, especially if it's something that affects me on a personal level, with the kids or husband or ex etc
~JerseyGirl