Who's the Boss?

"No one has control over the life-breath, to retain it, and there's no control over the day of death." - Ecclesiastes 8:8

My prayers have always been sprinkled with a need for control. I used to pray "Jesus, let Julia stay awake on this car ride because I need her to sleep at nap time so I can do my work..." God was already trying to teach me that this way of living is exhausting. I had a plan and I needed everything to go just so in order to carry out that plan.

Being at the fertility clinic gave me a false sense of control. Everything was so calculated. We could pick the gender of our baby and plan the date of their birth. We had a plan. Two kids before I turned 40.

Now that plan is shattered. Plans, as the author of Ecclesiastes says, are "pointless." We do not have control over life or death.

I don't know what to do with this reality. I just know it's painfully in my face. The reality of my mortality and humanity is something I can no longer trick myself or pray myself out of. I am not the manager who gets to boss Jesus around. I don't get to control who lives and who dies.

And yet I am not without agency. I've been thinking about the day Julia died. I feel overwhelmingly proud of her. She communicated her desires the whole day. She told me when she wanted to be in bed, when she wanted me in bed with her, and when she wanted to be in my arms. She communicated her need for water and her lack of appetite. I never had to guess what she wanted. I feel so proud of her for doing that her whole life. Long before she could talk she was telling me what she wanted. And I fully trusted her. She knew her body and she knew her desires and she worked hard to communicate them.

I think Jesus is just as proud of me. He's proud of how I tell him what I want. He's proud of how well I know myself. He's proud of how I've been attuned to my body and how I was attuned to Julia. He's proud of how I communicate to others what I need. I think he's even proud of my plans.

In many ways, Julia bossed us around. Someday she would've learned that she wasn't actually in charge. But I would give anything to have her tell me one more time to "sit...right there." This is God's heart for us too.