Getting Your Own Way
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”
1 Corinthians 13:4–8a, ESV
This week, our toddler learned a new word. After Mama, Dada, Duck (all animals) and Crocodile (her favorite stuffed animal) comes the first word with real power – “no”.
What a wild ride I know we’re about to have: somehow trying to find the middle ground between respecting these first forays into her recognizing her own autonomy and respecting it and being pushovers where our lives become dictated by endless “cocomelon” (A tv show that acts like a drug to toddlers), and her never eating anything other than peas and freeze-dried yogurt.
There are many moments where my toddler – or even our abominably behaved beagle – holds a mirror up to me about those things where I’m on the ‘no’ train – where I want everything my own way, or I cannot imagine another person’s ideas or ways of working in the world could possibly be as good as my own. I may not throw myself on the floor crying or howl at the door in pursuit of squirrels beyond the glass, but I can be sullen, rude or passive aggressive in pursuit of my own agenda.
Every season has its own challenges. Every season has moments where we feel out of control, and we desperately try to claw it back. Every season has things we want but can’t have.
As I wrestle with this in my own life, I go back and read these verses. It’s humbling to read these words and to be called again to be a person of love: someone who is patient, kind, not arrogant or rude, and someone who will understand that I won’t always be right – or perhaps, harder still, I will be right, but it will go unacknowledged, sometimes unjustly, sometimes leaving me to bear impossibly hard things. The call in these moments is to somehow carve out a way to place our whole hearts and minds into our Lord’s keeping – trusting that He has the whole world in His hands, that everything in under control, even if it’s not under our control, and that sometimes things will be painful, but God makes all things right; brings beauty from all ashes; brings life from all loss.
Where are you holding onto you own way today, where grace, love and kindness could make a better way?
