Out of Control

Here I am at the dawning of a new semester of life at Grove City.

Perhaps it's a characteristic of all fall semesters, but this past semester passed very quickly, much like my first. I can't decide if the speed is a good thing or a bad thing, but it doesn't much matter, I suppose. I can't control it anyway.

As I was contemplating ideas for this entry, this sentence popped into my head: "I feel like I'm not in control of my own life." I don't mean that I necessarily feel that way...just that as I looked at various aspects of my life, it occurred to me that I can't control them. Then it occurred to me that sometimes people take these thoughts to an extreme and utter the aforementioned phrase.

As it turns out, that statement is usually (entirely) true, and the sooner we realize it, the happier we'll be.

I'm not in control of my own life.
I'm not in control of my own life.
I'm not in control of my own life.

God is.

I can make choices. I can take action. I can say things. I can think things.

I cannot control everything, and that is most definitely a good thing. Undoubtedly I would mess up a large amount of things. And I have. And that's okay, because those mistakes ultimately send me back to the only one who can take full control. And that's where I find myself now. I find myself confused, weak, trying, and trusting with hope and optimism that if I rely solely on God, He'll take control.

It's a very hard thing for me to do. It's a hard thing for anyone to do, sure, but I think I have a particularly hard time with it. I've been searching my past and memories lately to find some mile marker that I can point to and say, "there it is. There is the moment that caused me to desire control of everything." Alas, no such marker exists, or if it does, I've lost it.

In order to illustrate the extent of my desire to control (without dragging you into some emotional battlefield), I'll relay to you the story of my dinner this evening.

Upon arriving in Grove City, my Dad and I searched around for a place to eat dinner together before he brought me to the dorm to unload. After driving around for an entirely unnecessary half-hour, we ended up at the Pizza Hut. I like pizza. I wanted dinner to be fast so that I could go settle in. It seemed like a good choice.

It was not.

We were seated within minutes of our entrance to the restaurant. It seemed promising. It turned out, however, that those running the restaurant believed that the most important part of service was prompt seating, and that every other aspect could be sacrificed...taking our orders for example.

We sat down in an incredibly dimly lit booth on the far side of the restaurant, a dimly lit booth that was to be our home for the next hour.

After about ten minutes, a waitress came over and took our drink orders, quickly running off before we could tell her that we'd like to order our food, too. In another five minutes our drinks arrived and five minutes after that, our waitress returned to take our dinner order. My dad ordered a hoagie and I ordered a pizza with three toppings...

Me: "I'd like a single serving pizza with pepperoni, banana peppers and extra cheese."
Waitress: *confused look* *scribbling* *confused look* "Pepperoni, banana peppers and cheese."
Me: "Yes."

Now, normally when a waitress gives me that kind of look, I know something's up. Honestly, my immediate instinct was to stand up and look at what she had written down. I'm not even kidding. I wanted to SO badly (controlcontrolcontrol). But I didn't (small victory), partly because she repeated the order back correctly. Turns out that repetition was a fluke.

For the next forty minutes we were basically ignored by every worker in that restaurant. No apologies. No offers of discounts. No drink refills. No updates on why it would take forty minutes to cook a small pizza.

This was my moment of greatest desire to control. At about minute 35, I was shaking in my booth. I punched one hand into the other. I tapped on the table. I wanted, very badly, to walk up to the counter, go behind it and find my order sitting there. I honestly thought about going back and asking if I could make the pizza myself.

Basically the night was like a series of small victories.

Eventually, a waitress got close enough for us to flag her down. After hearing that we had been waiting for over half and hour, she said she'd check on our order (no apology). She apparently spent the next five minutes checking. Let me tell you -- when you're hungry and annoyed and hungry and impatient, five minutes is a long time.

Eventually we got the food. The only thing on the pizza was banana peppers and the normal amount of cheese. Now, usually I would simply tell the waitress that the order was wrong and ask her to go add some pepperonis (very politely, of course), but I was too worried that they would take another hour to do that, so I made no comment. My next thought was that I could perhaps sneak into the kitchen and grab some pepperonis without anyone noticing. Now, obviously I didn't...but it did cross my mind.

After we ate, it took another five billion hours for us to realize that it would take them five billion hours to bring us the bill, so we just went up to the counter and waited there for someone to notice us, which happened promptly (perhaps they thought we were waiting to be seated).

The End.

Wow. That story took a long time to tell, it wasn't that good and it didn't really illustrate my point, much. Oh well. I think that I partly just wanted to vent about my less than poor dining experience.

I don't have much else to say. I suppose I would leave you with this though -- **see the insightful bit about God being in control**