Trust: Managing or Living Each Day

@JeanneTakenaka +Jeanne Takenaka

I’ve said it a lot over the past few months . . . this summer was a hard one for our family. Between poor choices made, Hubs traveling, and life happening, I’m weary.

When Hubs travels, I find myself slipping into manage-mode. Getting the boys where they need to be when they need to be there. Tamping down my own emotions to help them deal with theirs . . . and to keep the home environment at least somewhat calm. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful my hubs has a good job that he enjoys. But, my mindset shifts when he’s gone.

I’m always thinking ahead. If this happens, what would be the best outcome, and how do we get there? See? Planning. Managing. 

Sometimes, it’s easier to exist in manage-mode than live-mode. Because in manage-mode, I have this crazy sense that I’m in control. 

Ummm, have you stopped laughing yet?

But seriously, when I’m in manage-mode, I rarely make time to feel the hurt, the disappointment, the pain . . . or the joy, the satisfaction, the freedom that daily life offers.

Last month, when Edmund sustained his third concussion, my thoughts time-warped into manage-mode. 

God’s sense of timing is perfect. In the midst of this, I was reading, It’s All Under Control, by Jennifer Dukes Lee. I had just read a section that talked about managing life or living it.

When Hubs and I talked about Edmund not playing football anymore, my guy was in tears at the thought of our boy’s dream dying. 

But me? 

My thoughts rolodexed through ideas for the best way to tell him and how to “deal with” the fallout that would likely culminate in a teenage solar flare. 

I wasn’t feeling the grief. The pain of my son’s dream dying a painful, heart-wrenching death.

Yeah, I’m at a place where I need to re-learn how to live my life. Not just manage it. 

Not move into the next thing.

Not wrack my brain trying to figure out how to deal with the boys’ decisions. 

Their mistakes. 

Their attitudes.

I don’t always have to be the manager. The one getting things done for the sake of our family. 

I’ve invested so much time into helping the boys—or getting them help—that I haven’t fed myself. My quiet times, my writing time,the things that fill me, have been the sacrifice.

After living in manage-mode for a number of months now, I’ve grown scattered. I’ve become so intent on managing our family that I’ve forgotten how to feel. 

I haven’t had a hard, ugly cry over some of this summer’s heartbreaks. I haven’t fully dealt with the pain some of our boys’ choices have caused. I haven’t let myself stop to feel the disappointment, the breaking in my own soul. 

When I exist in manage-mode, I’m always thinking ahead, not processing each event. I’m planning how to mitigate the next disaster. Not living in each moment with my people. 

I have been praying and asking God to bring me back to a place where I’m able to feel with my family—the joys and the heartbreaks. I’ve prayed He will re-teach me how to trust Him with the outcomes, and even with my boys’ reactions to the hard things they face.

Ultimately, it comes down to trust. Do I trust God to manage my family, or am I trusting myself? 

Do I trust God to guide our boys, even when it seems like they are going far afield? Or do I try to control the circumstances and “guide” them in the paths I think they need to walk in?

Trusting God is the only way to walk out my days in living-mode. When I trust God with our sons, our circumstances, our relationships, He frees me to truly live in, to savor, each moment. 

That’s the mode I want to live in.

What about you? How do you choose trust rather than control in your life? How do you determine if you’re in manage-mode or live-mode?

Click to Tweet: I don’t always have to be the manager. The one getting things done for the sake of our family

I’m linking up with #RaRaLinkup, #TellHisStory, and Holley Gerth