Without A Map

When control feels safer than trust

I used to think I wanted clarity.

What I actually wanted was control.

There’s a difference.

Clarity sounds spiritual. Mature. Wise. Control sounds messy and insecure. But if I strip it back far enough, most of my anxiety has come from needing to know what’s next. Needing to plan. Needing to make sure I wasn’t about to step straight into something that would hurt me.

A lifetime of trauma does that.

It builds alarm bells into your nervous system. They don’t disappear just because you pray. They don’t vanish because you’ve grown. They sit there quietly, scanning, waiting, assessing risk.

I think there will probably always be alarm bells in my life. That doesn’t mean I’m broken. It just means I’ve lived. But here’s what I’ve learned slowly, painfully, bit by bit.

You can only control so much.

You can’t control what may happen tomorrow. You can try. You can rehearse it in your head. You can map out every worst case scenario. You can overprepare and overthink and overanalyse.

You’ll probably still be surprised.

And the more I try to control everything, the more out of control I actually feel.

The tighter I grip, the more anxious I become. The more I try to guarantee safety, the more I notice all the things I can’t guarantee. My mind starts scanning for puddles on the road before I’ve even stepped outside. It imagines disasters that haven’t happened and conversations that may never exist.

Control promises safety.

But it rarely delivers peace.

There were years where I truly believed that if I just planned well enough, I could avoid pain. If I just read the room carefully enough, chose wisely enough, prepared deeply enough, I could sidestep the heartbreak or the disappointment or the public failure.

But life doesn’t hand you a laminated map.

It hands you moments.

And sometimes those moments are beautiful. And sometimes they undo you. And most of the time they are completely outside your careful projections.

I used to get frustrated with God for not giving me clearer direction. I would ask for the map. Not the whole thing, just the next few turns. Just enough information to brace myself.

Instead, what I kept getting was something much simpler.

Follow Me.

The map, my friend, is simpler than we make it. It’s not a colour coded life plan. It’s not an advanced strategy for avoiding every storm.

It’s follow the Leader.

Follow His word. Follow His character. Follow His nudges. Do the next right thing in front of you.

That’s it.

And I won’t pretend that’s easy.

Because when you’ve lived through trauma, when you’ve been blindsided before, when you’ve carried grief or mental health struggles or deep disappointment, surrender feels risky. It feels irresponsible. It feels like letting your guard down.

But living in constant defence mode is exhausting.

There is a difference between wisdom and hypervigilance.

Wisdom listens.

Hypervigilance panics.

I’ve had to learn the difference. I’ve had to learn that the alarm bells might ring, but they don’t get to drive. They can alert me, but they don’t get to control my entire future.

Because no matter how hard I try, I cannot control tomorrow.

I cannot guarantee I won’t step in a puddle.

I cannot guarantee I won’t misjudge a situation.

I cannot guarantee people won’t misunderstand me.

And strangely, admitting that has been freeing.

The more I accept my limits, the more peace I find.

The more I loosen my grip, the steadier I feel.

The invitation was never to control your life into safety.

It was to trust.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” -Proverbs 3:5–6

That verse doesn’t promise a full map. It doesn’t promise an easy road. It promises direction when you choose trust over control.

And maybe that’s what you’re wrestling with too.

Maybe you’re tired of carrying the weight of outcomes that were never yours to carry.

Maybe you’ve been living with your shoulders tight, heart pounding and your jaw clenched, trying to make sure nothing blindsides you again.

I get that.

But what if peace isn’t found in predicting every turn…

What if it’s found in following.

Love, Sarah xx.

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Reflection question: Where in your life are you gripping tightly because you’re afraid of what might happen, and what would it look like to loosen that grip, even slightly, and trust God with that area?

A prayer: God, You know why I try to control. You know the history behind it. You know the fear that sits underneath my planning and my overthinking. Help me see the difference between wisdom and anxiety. Teach me how to trust You without needing the full map. When the alarm bells ring, remind me that You are steady. When my mind runs ahead, bring me back to the next right step. I don’t want to live braced for impact. I want to live anchored in You. Amen.

I hope you loved this post. Truly.

If it spoke to you, share it. Send it to someone who needs the reminder. You never know who is quietly trying to hold it all together.

And if you’ve been reading along for a while, there’s more waiting behind the curtain. Next week Issue 1 of the new Mini Magazine releases, the beginning of a quarterly rhythm here with deeper writings never released on the blog, scripture study, reflection pages and pieces I don’t share publicly.

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