Weird!  I came here to write a story for a dear friend....per request...and find that my personal page had been visited 1081 times!!!  Who would have figured that?? 

 Someone had requested that I repost the story about how I finally got a little wiser and stopped fighting God for control of my life and how things have been since that day, so here goes: 

I am the mother of three boys and have been raising them by myself from the beginning...don't ask..it's a messed up story.  Suffice to say that I am divorced and have never received any child support, so life has been a little tough on the financial side.  I finally went back to school at the age of 28 to become an LPN, but this didn't really relieve the pressure any.  Now, I've always considered myself a Christian and had been raised in a number of churches and sat under the preaching of many pastors.  I really tried but failed most of the time to be what God wanted me to be, but most every Sunday would find us in church and trying to live a Christian life. 

I spent my life struggling with bills...not credit card bills..the usual...house payments, utilities, car payments, auto insurance and food.  It seemed like my life moved from one disaster to the next and folks considered me as having the worst luck of anyone they had ever known.  Often I worked two jobs and sometimes three, went to school in the evening to try to get somewhere...anywhere but the Land of Desparate Non-housewives.  It seemed something was always in danger of being shut off....electric, gas, water. 

One thing or the other kept me from getting ahead...the car engine would blow, then the transmission, my company would go on strike....you name it, it seemed to happen to me.  I would lay awake each night and cry, praying for God to help me.  I needed so little in this life to be happy...I didn't want riches, beauty, fame or nice things...I just wanted to pay my bills on time.   

In the relationship department I also came up with ill fortune and got the wind knocked out of me on an emotional level a few times.  I was so lonely from doing this single dance without any support...no support financially, none emotionally.  My two sisters had started a hate war against me and my kids were getting bullied in school on a daily basis...my home town had turned into a hostile place for us to live and we decided to move away. 

One day I had fallen about as far as I could go...I had sold my home for the cost of pay off and was in a job transition, all my household goods were in storage and I was on my way to another part of the state looking for a job.  I would be moving there without knowing anyone, without a full-time job(on the phone they were only offering part time) and I hadn't been able to find a rental home in which to relocate. 

I was driving down a mountain, once again crying and begging God to help and staring through tears at the beautiful scenery.  Finally...finally...I managed to find the right prayer!  After almost 40 years of praying, begging, pleading for God to help me get what I wanted in life, I finally told God, "I give up!  I can't do this anymore, I can't handle my life anymore and I need you to take over.  You do it now, because I simply cannot any longer."

I know this sounds cheesy and like a country music tune, but I immediately felt such a glow of peace that I was crying for a different reason!  I felt like the world had been lifted from my shoulders and the day was so incredibly changed....everything came into sharp focus and I felt joy fill my heart.  I was excited and amazed by this feeling, where just moments before I was pounding the steering wheel and agonizing over my life.

Do you know?  I had been trying for a couple of months to find a home to rent in that area and had been turning up nothing.  I went to get an application from the employer that I had called the previous week, when they told me they only had part-time positions.  The secretary asked me, "Did you read about this job in the paper?"  I told her I had talked to someone the week before about a part-time job.  She said that only yesterday they had put an ad in the paper and the job was now full time...someone had quit unexpectedly.  I was hired that day.  And the Director of Nursing called me at my hotel that night and told me about a place I could rent. 

All that time and all those years I had been telling God that He had control over my life and that He could drive that machine...and all the while I had been in the passenger seat, trying to wrest the wheel out of His hands and steer towards where I wanted to go.  No wonder my life had been full of one wreck after another!!! 

From that day on I have been practicing giving up...this is a hard thing to do for someone who has had to be in the driver seat for so long.  I have been both mother and father, sole bread winner, single warrior in this long fight...and all the while I didn't have to be.  How foolish do I feel? 

Now I am free falling and I don't have to worry anymore...about anything, really.  Everytime something comes up that used to worry me, I just give it over to God and pray that "your will be done, not mine" and doors open, lights come on, miracles happen.  I couldn't tell you how many times I've stood in awe of how God worked things out right before my eyes and I could actually SEE how He worked it around to make things okay in my little world. 

This didn't used to happen in my old life...or maybe it did and I was too blind to see it.  Maybe I could only see my own agenda, my own roadmap that I had developed for my life....anyhoo, every day it gets more and more easy to let go and let God show me where to go, what to do.  I can't describe how wonderful it feels to not have to worry when things start looking dim.  My family are amazed at the change in my attitude and it makes them a little nervous to see me so laid back about things that used to stress me.  That's okay.... I am making less than I ever made($3 less on the hour than before!!) and I haven't been late on a bill since I prayed that prayer!  As a matter of fact, I was out of work for nearly a year a couple of years back and I still didn't make any late payments on bills.  How? Only Heaven knows...