Greetings from New York, the city of my engagement.  The city where the temperature this morning was a biting seventeen degrees and is now a balmy twenty-eight (but more on global warming in a moment).  The city where I sit in my apartment wrapping presents and writing this while A Charlie Brown Christmas plays on TV.  Meanwhile, I’m just trying to stay awake because every night since that ring was put on my finger, the hamster in my brain climbs on his wheel and starts to run, motivated by questions like “When is the perfect date to have the wedding?” and “What if it rains?” and “If I get this thing planned by next week, will I be able to sleep normally again?”

I think–and write–a lot about control, especially our illusions about being in it and the truth that we never are.  About how my favorite times–plane rides, my engagement, sporting events, the New York move, and most of life thus far–have been about mystery and being out of the controller’s seat.  But for all that thinking and writing, I have a feeling that this is an area that God and I will be working on for as long as the world spins.  Because no matter what happens, good or bad (and clearly we are in a period of time marked GOOD right now), my first response always is to manage things down to my level.  To take The Container Store approach to life: a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Turns out I’m not alone.  I went to Borders today to pick up Tim Keller’s new book for a gift exchange tonight.  I had ordered it online, but in a shocking twist of irony that served as great setup for this entry, the US Postal Service does not abide by my Container Store ethic, and the book remained undelivered as of press time.  Walking around the store, I noticed that almost every nonfiction book had a title/subject matter that reflected a way to control an aspect of the reader’s life.  My favorite (sorry, forgot the author) was a book called Sh*t Happens:  The Science Behind a Bad Day. Really?!  Besides the fact that the main title and subtitle seemed to completely contradict each other, the premise of the book itself made me laugh: science can explain your craptastic day!  And, presumably, science can turn it into a better one, starting tomorrow!

Then at the gym, I listened to Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty discuss the Copenhagen climate summit and how one option on the table is a non-binding agreement to limit the rise of the earth’s temperature to two degrees celsius in the next two years.  First of all, can we all bindingly agree that a non-binding agreement is as contradictory as the book title above?  And second…REALLY?!  A bunch of people sitting around a room can just DECIDE to change the earth’s temperature?  What’s next: a treaty to make God start wearing capri pants?

If it rains on my wedding day, I can do one of a few things:  (1) Cry and ask God why he keeps picking on me.  (2) Cry, call the author of Sh*t Happens, and ask why science keeps picking on me.  (3)  Let go of what I can’t control anyway and, as the Roomie said yesterday, remember that nothing about this process has turned out the way I thought it would–and that has been AMAZING.  So go with it.  And watch to see, as Oswald Chambers says, “how God unravels this thing.”

I was talking to the BF the other day about how now I can call him my future husband, and it hit me that he’s actually always been my future husband–there was just a big chunk of time there when I didn’t know it yet.  A chunk of time where I didn’t even know he existed; a chunk of time when I thought we were destined for Just Friends status; and now…now.  I was in the dark on it for thirty-two years, but the outcome was the same.  Science we can figure out, but life and God are still full of surprises.

Letting go works.  Open hands, as in the picture above, are the way to go.  The ring goes on much more easily.