A dash of control a pinch of crazy mountains of love

We all have a little control freak and crazy in us. Some a bit more than others. I have recently found that my control freakness has reared its ugly head more often as of late. I never realized I was really doing it until this past Christmas Day.

I've always been a little OCD.. more with certain things than others. Let me put it to you this way, I wanted to get married exactly a year from the time J and I had started dating which would have been the 10th of June. 06-10-2008 all even numbers, so it made perfect sense in my head. Well June 10th that year landed on a Tuesday, I am SO not getting married in the middle of the week! So I looked to the weekend before... June 7, 2008. Well, first of all it wasn't all even number, and that was a nagging irritation.. but than I noticed this--06-07-08 I knew that was the perfect day! So, we got married June 7, 2008. I know, sounds a little crazy. And as I write this, the hubster is rolling his eyes telling me how crazy I sound. But like I said, we all have a little crazy in us... :)

So where am I going with this??? Christmas day, we were preparing the fabulous feast for our fantastic dinner. Ham, mashed potatoes, 7 layer salad, mac and cheese, green bean haystacks, egg noodles, corn on the cob, and rolls. (I know, I'm hungry just writing about it!) Well, the corn was supposed to be cut in half, J didn't cut it in half. I wanted the tongs on the towel, he put them in the water with the corn. And yes, my crazy control freakishness emerged. I was completely and totally angry with him. And it just continued to escalate. He got angrier, I got angrier, he got annoyed, I got more annoyed. He didn't fix a plate with everyone, I got irritable. The night went on, and on, and on, and we continued not speaking. I got angrier by the moment.

This fiasco caused me to do some self reflection. Some soul searching, a deeper look into the reaction. You see, this wasn't the first time this had happened. Anytime a scenario spun out of control, my anger and patience would spiral in unruly rages. Verbal diarrhea got the best of me and the censorship was turned off. My privacy fence to my thoughts and feeling were spewing all over the place, subjecting anyone within a 10 yard radius to the freak out session. So I prayed and I cried and I tried to understand. It was as if the Lord spoke the words and laid them on my heart, and I felt the thoughts and the insight of it all radiating from my heart to my mind. And suddenly everything made sense...

See, I couldn't control Savanna dying. I wasn't able to make her breathe again. I wasn't there to try to get her to come back to me, as she was gone before I could get to her. I had NO CONTROL. But... I do have control over how the corn is cut, or where I place the silverware, I have control over what tupperware I am going to put the food in, or the boxes I'm going to pack the decorations into. I can stop the food from burning.

In a desperate attempt to feel something other than pain, heartache, emptiness, despair, sadness, I control things. And when they don't go my way or the way I anticipated I get angry. Because sometimes being angry and controlling seems less exhausting. I don't have to think, I just act. But than after a discussion with my mom I came to great realization. In my attempt to shield myself from the heart wrenching pain, I'm uprooting my anchor, knocking down my rock,and pushing away my shelter in the storm.

So I finally apologized (and those who know me, know that is a very difficult task!) and explained a little where my mind is at. I promised that I would work on my 'outwardly angry' spastic moments. And truly try to rein them in. It's OK to be emotionful, but we need to know where they come from, where they are rooted. Otherwise it becomes an annoying merry-go-round with no solution in sight. I have to learn to let things go, to think before I speak, to check myself at the door. And sometimes, I admit, I forget that he's grieving too. I'm not the only one missing her, I'm not the only one trying to find a way to put the pieces back together. What I do know is that a jig saw puzzle gets finished much more efficiently with two people, an anchor is easier to cast together. So although I know we will have our humps, bumps and mountains, eventually we'll piece our lives back together. We'll eventually find a routine and we'll continue to remember our sweet baby girl. And I know that conquering this now means we can conquer anything together.

Apart we're incomplete, but together we're unbreakable