Choosing to be Controlled by Good People

“Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.” -Valentine Wiggin in Ender's Game

I'll expand out that quotation a bit from my perspective - good is an empirical fact that we often don't know, but must be judged in light of what we know, don't know, past experiences etc.  I've included it here as a way of providing  background to how I arrived at the decision described in a previous post.

We are all being constantly controlled - hopefully in God's direction - by others.  We must constantly reevaluate what role our various relationships play in our lives and whether or not those people are controlling us in directions that we need to go.

Are some relationships beyond reproach?  Do blood ties exist no matter what else goes on?  Is a mental or emotional connection stronger than the genetic lottery?  Do some have an inevitable claim on you simply because?   These are open questions that we must answer and I'm not convinced I have the right answers (incidentally mine are: yes, sort of, yes, no).

The Sculpting of the Father's Great Design: A Splitting Road

"Here is where the road divides / Here is where we realize / The sculpting of the Father's great design...

But I know the road He chose for me / Is not the road he chose for you / So as we chase the dreams we're after... And I know that thru' it all / The hardest part of love is letting go / But there's a greater love that holds us... Pray for me" 

-- adapted from Pray for Me as recorded by Michael W. Smith

I've rewritten this post a dozen times already, but I figure I may as well go for it at this point...  As with many of my posts, a quote seems the best way to begin.  Life is often filled with such points the Divine Weaver's tapestry often involves threads joining together and coming apart in ways that only He understands.  Such occurrences are inevitable and to be accepted if we are to live in Divine Indifference.

Threads that have occupied the same space earlier in the weave might be drawn towards a different place in the weave as the Universal Cloth is woven and the threads of our lives are Called towards to other patterns.  If we are to be good parts of the weave, we must come to accept this and support these decisions or we risk moving off from them entirely.

I write this post as a way of explanation for a decision that my fiance and I have come to regarding some people & situations in our lives.  Quite simply, I do not believe these people to be malicious in anything they do.  I believe them to be seeking the Divine and trying to do good just as we are.  However, when these two sets of goals conflict and when they cause inordinate heartache on either side for an extended period of time, one has to consider whether or not we are being called to move in a different direction from each other.

I suspect this post will be rewritten time and time again, but for now I believe this will suffice.  In any case, I'll end as I began, with a quote from the same song...

"Pray for me and I'll pray for you / Pray that we will keep the common ground / 

Won't you pray for me and I'll pray for you / And one day love will bring us back around again"