Sunday pastor talked about Paul’s thorn in the flesh. He said your thorn may be your family, an illness, financial. I left service thinking, what is my thorn. And true to form, I ruminated over it, hamsters running, wondering what is my thorn. Never did I stop and think, just ask God.

So today. I arrive at work at 657am in time for the 7am meeting. I’m all proud of myself and wonder, where are my coworkers?  They show up seconds later and proceed to tell me that I have a flam-o-gram email in my inbox. I mistakenly sent an invite to my new client for the wrong date. Correct time, wrong date. I send my apology and then proceed to incorrectly communicate to the executive program manager that we have one implementation, when I should have said 2. She calls this out on a conference call where I also learn that she was grilled for 90 minutes at the crack of dawn due to my incorrect invite.

My coworkers made light of it, told me to relax, don’t worry about it. But it nagged at me. I ping the steamroller and she swings by to pray over me. That sets off the water works. She prays then we talk. I cannot stop the tears. She says, what is it? It’s bigger than this.  But I cannot put it into words. I cannot make a coherent thought.  I fumble for the words and say I want to know what I did wrong. I thought I was walking in humility, I thought I was trusting the Lord, I thought I set things up right. What happened? Maybe…and I begin to answer my questions. She stops me and says, stop answering your own questions. Ask God. We don’t know the answers, that’s why we pray and ask for them.

She tells me she knows I feel pressure (to perform, to be credible, to deliver) and maybe God is saying, hold on, slow down.  I nod, that’s exactly it. I tell her I can’t handle not knowing, not having the answer, not being at the top of my game. And she blinks. This is about control, she tells me. You have a control problem.  More water works. Because I do. I know I do. Not because anyone had to tell me this but because I just know (and people have told me I do). I do not like not knowing, no matter what it is that I don’t know. Starting a new job means not knowing, means I’m an unknown quantity, means I have to prove myself.  Starting a new relationship means uncertainty, doubt. And I hate, not knowing.  I told the guys, I did at least 15 implementations in the year I was on the other team and this NEVER happened to me. So why now? And I want to answer that question. But, I will “ask God.”

Yesterday I was on my own for a call that D.L. had been running. He explained an issue to me and I understood, spit that out at the meeting and felt good. I even smiled and signed “THANK YOU” to the Lord. I’ve thought that I’ve been walking in humility, that I’ve been trusting God and I really believe I am, but she hit the nail on the head, twice, in saying that I have control issues and that I must stop answering my own questions.

After an event Sunday evening I wandered through my apartment talking to myself. I told myself answers to some questions that have been pressing down on my heart. So when the steamroller told me, stop answering your own questions, it stunned me and I saw myself clearly.  Sometimes clarity is a painful thing. Sometimes a smudged mirror is easier to use than a Windexed one. The latter shows every flaw, every open pore, every wrinkle and mole. The cracked one with the smudges leaves room for doubt, maybe it’s this dirty looking glass and not a blemish, I need to get a new mirror.  Mind games. Tricks. But the truth is sitting there, quietly waiting to be accepted.