I am out of control.
I don’t mean that in a bad way, because you are out of control too.
Whether you’ve been paying much attention to the news or listening to the gossip at work, it appears that coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it’s scientifically known, is taking over the world.
I don’t have it nor does anyone I know personally, but we have all in some way been infected and affected by it. From the stock market to your neighborhood school or grocery store, coronavirus has come for us all with a vengeance. Seemingly.
Even if your body hasn’t been impacted by the virus, your life has.
You might have had to postpone that vacation or cruise or work remotely from home.
Businesses are closing their doors. (Disney World shut down. The Happiest Place on Earth.) Events are rescheduling. Some people are shutting themselves in as a precaution.
People are dying.
Something that started so far away from us, is now having a huge ripple effect on our day to day life.
What all this has taught me, is that: I have very little control over anything.
Our World
When I was a little girl, I would lie awake in bed thinking that I was a part of a big shoe box diagram. You know those shoe box projects teachers assigned back in grade school where you had to create a whole world inside of a shoe box? Like a house, or an animal habitat, or the galaxy.
Something like this.
Another shoe box diorama
Well as a kid, I thought our world was a maze of shoeboxes and we the people existed in them (I was a strange child). Far far above us, God was watching and manipulating us, the little shoebox-maze people. Like a puppeteer moving all the pieces. He was the orchestrator of it all.
My ideas today don’t differ too much from this theory. I no longer believe in the shoebox maze but we are definitely all a part of one big puzzle put together by God. Only he knows where all the pieces fit and only He can arrange them so.
I am merely a piece of the puzzle. Just a part of the bigger picture.
Times like this make you realize exactly how small our world is. And how little control we have over any of it.
I’m Not in Control
As a former control freak, the realization that I control much of nothing should have, well, freaked me out. It has actually been quite freeing.
The school where I teach may shut down soon and I have no say in the matter. Nor do the parents of my students, who would be hugely affected by the loss of childcare.
Restaurants are moving to take-out only options and grocery stores are running out of supplies.
Panic is ensuing all around us.
I take comfort in knowing this one thing: I have very limited control over the world, my community or others, but I have full control over myself. I refuse to panic over something I have no control over. See, God may be in ultimate control but He gave us free will, meaning He gave us choices.
I can choose to worry about this virus and avoid sick people like the plague OR I can choose to wash my hands more and be more conscious of my hygiene. I can choose to read the news and make up stories in my mind, OR I can choose to stay informed and PRAY the best over the situation. (My prayers can change things that I can’t.)
You can choose too.
We may not know how this coronavirus began or when it will end. It’s not up to us to know. It is up to the One who is in control, the One who reigns sovereign over us all.
God is above it all.
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