Yielding My Control to God

The Illusion of Control

The startling sound was made by the business end of an AK-47 against my car window. My heart lurched. Headed out for a date, I had just parked along the river road in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and here was the Big Bad Wolf at my door — a heavily armed thirteen-year-old in camouflage fatigues.

I should pause to provide a little context. Small-town Tennessee was my first home — but only until I was twelve years old. After becoming disillusioned with the American Dream, my parents answered a call to missionary work with the Presbyterian Church. Their skills in business and education would support the larger work of the Church in Zaire.

We left our comfortable lives behind and moved to a new home across the sea. I attended The American School of Kinshasa, and my middle-Tennessee paradigms quickly fell away in this strange new world. By my senior year of high school, one of my regular goals was to escape the hectic environment of a country and city controlled by the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko — and, as a bonus, to escape my mundane schoolwork. This is what drove me to venture out that fateful evening.

“Get out of the car!”

I jumped to obey the order. Scrambling to get the doors open, I stumbled out of the VW Golf and stood waiting. Then the boy loaded a round of ammunition into the firing chamber.

I began to babble. ​“Can you ride with us to the US embassy? It’s just down the road.” I had been taught this was always to be the first response when under threat. Unfortunately, the boy had zero interest in any of the pleas I squeezed out in those precarious few seconds.

My mind was a tumult of panicked thoughts. This is it. I’m not leaving here alive. Can I rush him? Do I have the guts? My fear swelled as he started to fumble with his weapon.

“Wait,” I blurted. ​“I have money!”

Child soldiers are neither well paid nor well fed. Praise God, there was an envelope of cash in my glove box — meant to pay for dinner, but likely the equivalent of my interrogator’s annual wage. Having exhausted myself of the delusion that I could control the situation through negotiation, that money purchased my freedom. Envelope in hand, the young soldier disappeared wordlessly into the shadows and humidity of the night.

Almost forty years later, I still remember those heart-pounding minutes with adrenaline-driven clarity. I had absolutely no idea what would happen next, and I had no real power over the outcome. None. Isn’t it strange that we often respond to moments of such total helplessness by working ever harder to avoid them in the future?

When we are confronted by our own utter inability to control what happens to us, it often compounds our belief in a false narrative, the narrative that tells us that we can and should be in control — that our experiences of powerlessness are just avoidable blips in the normal pattern where we are in control. So we resolve to avoid those irritating moments that disrupt the illusion of control in the future, and, un- checked, the false narrative swells and seeps into other areas of our lives.

The Freedom of Relinquishing Control and Embracing a System

You may not find yourself held at gunpoint, but I know you understand what I mean: You experience those frustrating, eye-opening moments of powerlessness from time to time when your flight is delayed, or a beloved staff member decides to move on, or your child catches the flu on the worst possible day. You just cannot control everything. Not in your personal life, your family, your spiritual life, or your organization. And any attempt to do so will drive you crazy.

As the CEO of a Christian nonprofit, I’ve been on a journey over the last decade and a half, one of yielding my control to God both in my private life and in my leadership and direction of the organization. It has been so freeing to loosen my grip on that false story, the story that I can and should steer the ship regarding every single aspect of my life and work. As my spiritual director once pointed out, the more I’ve grown in releasing control, the more God has drawn me to lean on the freeing structure of practice—routines, traditions, and procedures.

For example, my organization uses the Carver Model system of board governance. I tell fellow CEOs all the time that in using this system, with its abundance of policies (laws and rules, if you will), I have experienced more freedom and clarity as a leader than ever before in my previous stints as a CEO. I am scaffolded in my work; my burden has been lightened, and my hands freed up. With firm guidelines and walls around me, provided by an outside source rather than generated and controlled by me, I can see and move unencumbered. I believe this is the sort of liberty God intended when he gave the law to the people of Israel: freedom within obedience and order. It may be the opposite of control, but it feels like true freedom.