When Control Keeps Us Stuck
Lately, I’ve felt stuck. Maybe you have too.
Some mornings I wake up able to trust that God loves me—that there is a benevolent force holding all things together. Other mornings? Not so much.
In my spiritual growth, I’m realizing this: I am not here to “live my life” the way my ego wants me to. Instead, I am surrounded by Life itself, and my work is to surrender to it. Surrender feels risky, doesn’t it? But it is actually an opening to something larger—an energy not of my making, with more vision, more abundance, and more creativity than I could ever manufacture on my own.
You might call it Essence, or the Universe, or the Universal Christ, or Higher Power. The names vary, but the invitation is the same: surrender to what is beyond your control.
Forgetting and Remembering
There’s a story about a little boy who asked to be alone with his new baby brother. Through the hazing picture and crackling speaker of the baby monitor, his parents overheard him whisper:
“Tell me where you came from. I know I came from there too… I just can’t remember anymore.”
The Enneagram teaches something similar. We forget who we really are—our essential selves—and instead build up personalities, strategies, and identities to get through life. Those identities aren’t “bad,” but they’re not our truest selves either. The spiritual journey is about remembering Essence, and that means letting go of what we cling to for control.
The Vastness of Things
I was listening to a Michael Singer talk on a run the other night and he said this: the universe doesn’t care about you. Not in the way we imagine, anyway.
At first, that sounds harsh. But sit with it: the universe is nearly 14 billion years old. Our earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Long before us, tectonic plates shifted, oceans carved canyons, glaciers melted and re-formed, stars lived and died, scattering the very elements that make up our bodies.
Even now, the scale is staggering: 8.7 million species share this planet with us. Our Milky Way galaxy alone holds somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars. And scientists estimate there may be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Against that backdrop, our lifespans—80 or 90 years if we’re lucky—are not even a blink.
And yet—here we are. Breathing. Awake. Loved into being.
So when I cling to my tiny plans and my ego’s need to control, it should almost feel comical. In the scope of time and space, I’m a flicker. But the miracle is that this flicker matters—not because I’m in control of life, but because Life is happening through me.
A Prayer of Alignment
On a run recently, I remembered St. Patrick’s Breastplate prayer, and it struck me anew. It is not a prayer about God orbiting my life—it is a prayer of my life being immersed in God:
I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me, God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me.
Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
This prayer is an act of surrender—of stepping into the flow of the universe, not insisting that I be at the center of it.
And that’s the work before me this month: to surrender, to trust, to stop clutching handfuls of control when I am already immersed in the abundance that is flowing all around me.
Maybe that’s your work too.