.Once Upon a Time.

....there was a girl who loved a boy and loved his passions and desires. She wanted to follow this boy to the end of the earth if need be, but she also wanted to play it safe.

Not rock the boat.

This girl liked routine,

she liked predictability,

she like stableness.

She found security and comfort in monotony, and she fled from change. She loved God, and desired His will for her life, but she clung with white knuckled fierceness to control of certain aspects of her life, and shamefully even tried to claim the reigns of control in the life of the boy whom she so loved.

The boy on occasion would mention a desire to pursue other passions other ministries. The girl, oh how she would balk, and whimper and whine like the hot-headed toddler child that still reigned in her heart at times. The girl could manipulate the boy with well-thought out words. She knew just what to say to tighten those reigns of control. And the boy, oh how he loved the girl, and wanted what was best for her. So he would back down. Time and time again. Little by little she whittled away at his will, his desires - trying hard to fit them into her safe little mold for their life.

The girl knew that this area of her life needed to be chipped away at. She knew that the control she fought so hard to hang on to was not right. This crazy need to control her life, his life, and everything that revolved around that was so very wrong. The control was not even real. It was imaginary.

She was not in control and could never be in control. She needed to relinquish it over to her Creator, Who was, and always had been - in control.

The girl was terrified of what this might mean. Terrified of really letting go, for probably the first time. Ever. She trembled at the thought of cutting the reigns from her clenched fists, and handing them over. What kind of fool would relinquish control over his life for some unknown future?

This area of control after all had been the girl's security blanket for as long as she could remember.

Don't rock the boat.

Keep going.

Keep plodding.

Resist change - change brings about the unknown, and with the unknown a lack of control. A complete and total surrender of what she had clung to for so long.

And then, what she had been so fearful of for such a long time, happened. Her Father breathed into her heart the voice of Truth - about her need to surrender. The girl crumbled in a heap knowing that the charade was truly over. In order to live like her Creator intended her to live, she had to give up and give over this area of her life.

So broken and humbled the girl admitted to the boy that she could no longer carry on the false pretense of control.

The masquerade was over.

It was time to surrender.

She begged the boy's forgiveness for her manipulative ways, for her stubborn heart, and as the tears rolled over her cheeks she began to feel a peace wash over her, and begin to uncloud her mind and the lies she had told herself.

The boy seemed to have been waiting and praying for a long time for the girl to speak and feel those words.

He held the girl.

And the girl surrendered to the boy's embrace.

And together, for the first time, that boy and that girl free fell into the arms of the One who orchestrated it all.

There was no zip chord.

No parachute.

There was no emergency exit.

Just complete and total reliance in Someone outside of themselves.

Is the girl still scared?

Yes. But for the first time in her life, the girl feels real peace that covers much of the fear and knows the freedom that comes when one surrenders ALL.

... whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:33)