Setting Aside Willfulness

What matters is that we set aside our willfulness. I keep returning to this phrase because willfulness is my default setting. Not just wanting things to go a certain way but insisting they must. Not just having preferences but demanding reality conform to my vision of how things should be.

Last Thanksgiving I orchestrated every detail — the seating arrangement, the timing of dinner, who would sit next to whom so nobody would bring up my brother's drinking. I told myself I was keeping the peace. What I was really doing was insisting the whole family perform my version of normal. When my mother moved the place cards, I nearly lost it over place cards.

That's the seductive thing about willfulness — it always feels justified. Of course I'm right about how to handle the holidays. Of course I know what this family needs. But my determination to be right kept everyone walking on eggshells, including me. I was so rigid there was no room for the evening to become anything other than what I'd scripted.

Setting aside willfulness doesn't mean having no opinions. It means holding them loosely enough that God and other people can surprise me with something better than what I had planned.

When I notice myself insisting things go my way, I can take my hands off the steering wheel — step back, let someone else decide, and trust that the outcome doesn't depend on me being right.