Focus on the Family

Guest (Female): Is your marriage struggling? Communication breaking down, trust fading, conflict that never seems to resolve? Well, there's still hope. Hope Restored marriage intensives by Focus on the Family helps couples step away from daily life and focus fully on rebuilding their relationship. Right now, through the marriage investment initiative, Hope Restored is investing $1,000 toward marriage intensives. Visit hoperestored.com/invest.

John Fuller: This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

Lisa TerKeurst: When we release a loved one, when we release a child into trusting the Lord, we're releasing them to the Lord. We're not releasing them to a cliff to fall over. We need to mentally have this picture that we are releasing them into the arms of God, and that's the safest place for any person to be. Now, will we always get the outcome that we want? Absolutely not. But regardless, we can't control the outcome anyways.

John Fuller: That's insight from Lisa TerKeurst, who's our guest today again on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We're glad you've joined us.

Jim Daly: It's great to have Lisa back. Every time it's just wisdom, wisdom, wisdom, and she's lived a life of observation, I would say. Last time we talked about fear and control, and we're going to continue that discussion today. It was so good and has application for each and every person because in this life, in our sinfulness, fear, which the Lord does not want us to live in, leads to unhealthy control issues.

I would say many of the marital problems that we see here at Focus on the Family, that we help at Hope Restored, our marriage intensive, much of it is rooted in this area of fear and control. I'm so grateful she's written the book that we can talk about today, and I just want to get on with it.

John Fuller: And that book is called *Making Peace with What I Can't Control: Find Relief from the Exhaustion of Overthinking, Trying to Fix Others, and Wanting to Figure It All Out*.

Jim Daly: Hey, hang on, John. The phones are ringing off the hook! Everybody needs this. Contact us today if you want to get a copy of the book and, by the way, download the broadcast app that we have so you don't have any fear about missing out on what Lisa shared last time.

We covered a lot of material last time, but we're going to roll into continuing to get to this issue of fear and control and all that. Let's go back and talk about the common fears that often lead to control because we didn't get to that list. I'll read them again, and I want you to highlight a couple, but fear of rejection, abandonment, or not being loved. These are the things in a lot of times in our childhood that we experienced that set up our attitudes and our emotional response.

Lisa TerKeurst: And even our perceptions of present-day things we're going to face. We will pull from these previous feelings, and they may go all the way back to unhealed things in our childhood or even experiences that we had throughout our adulthood. Rejection is a big one.

Jim Daly: And abandonment. In a marriage, that can be the other spouse is working late, and you catastrophize that into, "What are they doing? They're not wanting to spend time with me," and they're actually working on a project that the boss said, "Could you get this done by the time you leave tonight?" Some of that is like that because of those wounds as a child. You're making it into something it's not.

Lisa TerKeurst: Yeah, I think one of the greatest fears that we have as humans is emotional suffering, and the fear of loss ties right into that as well. I tell a story in the book about one of my dearest friends. Her name is Leah. She has worked side-by-side with me on every book project that I've done for it seems like eons. Because we're so close and we're working together all the time, we process a lot of life.

I tell a story about Leah losing her father to brain cancer. He went from being this vibrant, healthy, strong man to finding out he had a brain tumor, and then the decline and deterioration was shocking. It definitely impacted her, and the grief was enormous. Leah had one son by the time her father passed, and then she since had another daughter.

She came to me and said she thinks there's this area of controlling that has been really troublesome to her marriage. That is that she always wants to make every choice for her kids to make sure that they are healthy. She watched her father deteriorate and doesn't want that in her children. It's caused some tension between her and her husband.

We were processing this, and I asked her a very important question. I asked, "Leah, are you trying to keep your kids healthy, or are you trying to prevent cancer?" Trying to keep your kids healthy is a responsible thing to do. Trying to prevent cancer is impossible. You can do all that you can do to set your children's health up for success, but ultimately you cannot control whether or not they ever get a diagnosis of cancer.

I think that helped open her brain to that fine line between being responsible—feed your kids healthy food, do what you need to do to keep them healthy—but not be so controlling where you take it into hyperdrive trying to prevent cancer because at the end of the day, that's not going to be possible.

Jim Daly: And that's a good example of how to deal in a healthy way with something that could be unhealthy. What was her first response if you can recall? Was she defensive?

Lisa TerKeurst: No, she wasn't because I asked her a very important question at first: "Are you open to a thought?" Anytime we're going to share something that could step on somebody's toes, you just ask, "Are you open to a thought?" She said yes, I am. I asked her that profound question, "Are you trying to keep your kids healthy or are you trying to prevent cancer?"

It really impacted on a very practical level the way that she's now interacting with her family. It was life-changing to her. It's not a perfect science, of course. Does she sometimes still step into trying to prevent cancer? Of course she does. But because she's aware of it, it has drastically improved the environment of her home. I think that's the secret. It is not to do this right all the time, but it's to get it right while there is still time to provide a healthier environment for us and our loved ones.

Jim Daly: That is so good. In that regard, you were up in the Alpine, I think one of those Alpine slide rides. We have plenty of them here in Colorado. Actually, come visit them. But it's what they do in the summertime, and you get into this metal car and you ride down the ski slopes at a fast pace. You learned something in that little lesson of how to surrender.

Lisa TerKeurst: That's right, and it was a painful lesson. My friend Joy really wanted to ride the mountain coaster. I was very timid, and I thought, "I don't want to ride the mountain coaster. I've never wanted to ride a mountain coaster. I don't have that on my bingo card." I'm looking at the mountain coaster and I'm thinking I'm not even sure this thing is 100% safe. I would prefer not. I can find other things to do to have a lot of fun. I don't need that.

But she was like, "Come on, you can do it with me, you can do it with me." She finally said we'll ride on it together. I said okay. We get up, and you know how you've been in a situation where things are unfolding but it takes your brain a minute to catch up before all of a sudden you realize it's kind of too late? My brain didn't catch up on time. That's what happened.

They strapped Joy in her seat, ushered me to the front of the car. Basically, I am sitting on the front of the car. They put a seatbelt across me, and then the thing goes. I realize I'm in a terrible position. I was trying to control, and instead, now I have put myself in the worst position possible. I am strapped to the front of this.

The thing starts going. The operator looks at Joy and says, "Do not hit the brake unless there's an object in front of you." Joy and I are both rule followers, so she never hit the brake. We went so fast because the weight of two of us on the car made us go even faster. Never hitting the brake, we screamed so loud. We had friends on the other side of the mountain and they could hear us and identify that it was Joy and Lisa screaming.

At first, I was screaming for my life, like "Help me, help me!" I was so unwell. But about three quarters of the way into the ride, I thought all that screaming is doing is wearing my voice out. Nobody's coming to save us. Until we get through this, we cannot get off this, we cannot get around this, we cannot get above this. We've got to get through this.

I stopped screaming, and I just surrendered to the process, and we did get through it. One of the most powerful prepositions in all of the Bible, as my friend Dr. Joel Muddamalle says, is the word "through." We have to sometimes just go through. The children of Israel had to go through the wilderness. Jesus had to go through the cross.

Sometimes we are going to be in situations where there is absolutely nothing we can do. We are strapped to the front of a situation that is going to barrel through what it is going to barrel through, and we have to get through it. In the process of getting through it, if we white-knuckle it, resist it, scream at the top of our lungs, we can certainly make that the way we get through it, or we can realize ultimately I don't have control.

Ultimately, I've got to surrender this, and what I would say is surrender it to the Lord. The rollercoaster eventually came to a stop. I unstrapped myself, got off, and I declared I'll never do that again. In the middle of it, there was nothing I could do to control. I thought, "This is what it feels like. This is what it feels like to have absolutely no control, and guess what? I survived."

Jim Daly: And we pay money to do that. That's crazy.

Lisa TerKeurst: I did pay money. That's the very unfortunate thing. I think Joy actually paid money for it too. You know what's interesting with that? Think of life circumstances, whatever they might be, and the operator whispering that, the Lord whispering to us, "Don't use the brake."

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guest today is Lisa TerKeurst. That's the kind of biblical, practical insight you'll get when you get a copy of her book, *Making Peace with What I Can't Control: Find Relief from the Exhaustion of Overthinking, Trying to Fix Others, and Wanting to Figure It All Out*. Get a copy of the book from us and deploy some of these principles. You will find yourself living a better life. We've got the book here. Call 800, the letter A, and the word family, or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Lisa, I'm thinking of a book that Focus published with Dr. Ken Wilgus. The title is hilarious. It's *Feeding the Mouth That Bites You: How to Emancipate Teenagers into Adulthood*, and it fits with this.

He explained to me that a lot of his therapy time as a counselor is spent helping parents understand the moment they're in because they tend to linger in that healthy control of raising a young child. They still have those attributes in the teen years, and he said that's the biggest mistake a parent is making.

You let your later teen decide if they're going to go to church. Ken said to let them fail at home rather than go off to college and totally get untethered to good habits and biblical characteristics. You have to be strong enough and courageous enough to let them fail. It's better that they fail in your home. Most of the therapy is undoing a parent's thought and helping a child be able to express themselves, which is kind of what you're saying.

Lisa TerKeurst: Yeah, and let me fully acknowledge that I know how hard this is. It sounds good when we're recording a broadcast. Practical everyday living, sometimes we're going to do this right and sometimes we're going to get it wrong. The secret is to recognize when we've gotten it wrong, when we've stepped over and tried to not only manage ourselves but manage their life as well.

It's to catch it quickly and to go and acknowledge like, "Hey, I have stepped over into control mode and I love you, I want the best for you. It's not an excuse, but that is the truth. And guess what? Now I'm ready to say the script to you: 'Okay, your choice. Okay.'"

I think we cross the line again from being responsible to being controlling the minute that I don't stop at just sharing my wisdom, but I expect someone else's choices to line up with my desires. That's the difference, and that's exactly what he's getting at, and that's where you end up in trouble.

Jim Daly: Let's make sure we understand what's mine and what's yours, whoever that other person is—your spouse, your child, your friend. How do you know what is genuinely yours to own and what is theirs to own?

Lisa TerKeurst: If I can't own it, I can't control it. I tell a story in the book about a loved one that had been struggling with addictions. In the world of addictions, control is a big factor. I had gotten so in tune with their struggle that one night I woke up at 2:00 in the morning and sat straight up in bed, gasping. I knew they were in trouble and doing something they weren't supposed to be doing.

We didn't live in the same household, but we had "Find My" on our phones, so I checked their location. Sure enough, at 2:00 AM, they were driving around. I thought there was no reason to be driving around then. I got in my car and drove to find them. They went through an all-night drive-through, and I was able to catch up to them.

I pulled my car beside theirs and told them to pull over. They refused. I parked my car and stood my body in front of their vehicle and said, "You cannot drive until you pull over and take a breathalyzer test." It had become such an overwhelming situation that I carried a breathalyzer test in my glove compartment. I eventually got them to pull over, they took the test, and I talked them into letting me drive them home.

After I dropped them off, I drove home and walked up my sidewalk at 3:00 AM. I thought, "What am I doing? This is not sustainable, and in the end, this isn't helping." It is an extremely painful realization, but what I was doing was not only my part, but I was doing their part. I felt like it was my duty to prevent bad things from happening, so I became a rescuer to the nth degree.

In the end, all of my rescuing efforts never caused them to turn around. It's like pulling a loved one off a train track. If they are continuing to crawl back up on that train track and the train is barreling closer and closer, eventually you're going to crawl up on the train track chasing them, and the train is going to run over you both.

Jim Daly: I know a story where someone did engage their adult child, a young adult in their 20s, and they did that exact thing. It actually had a more positive outcome that that was an action that arrested the child's behavior and they got help. So you never know, but you've got to know your motivation. Only you can know your motivation, like how far can I do this? How long can I do this? That is such a personal thing, but the warning is what we're wanting parents to hear or friends to hear.

Lisa TerKeurst: Absolutely. And look, you can be a support, you can be the parent, you can be their greatest prayer warrior, you can put resources in front of them so that they can try to get the help they need, but at the end of the day, they have to make that choice.

Jim Daly: That is so true, especially for addictions. Lisa, let me ask you. You have a great story about giving a very precious treasure to a stranger on an airplane, somebody named Ron. Describe what happened and then what happened over the years.

Lisa TerKeurst: I got on an airplane one day, and this was 25 years ago. I was very tired, so I prayed a selfish prayer: "Lord, let me be the only one on my row because I'm so tired." I'd been speaking at a retreat all weekend and I was all talked out. I sat down and at first I was the only one on my row and I was like, "Oh, thank you, Lord."

Jim Daly: I like that prayer.

Lisa TerKeurst: Well, I wasn't sure at first. Then right before the plane doors closed, they let one last person on the airplane. It was a man named Ron. I came to know his name because he came to sit right beside me and he wanted to talk. I wasn't sure at first, so I decided I'm going to pull out my Bible. Either that will make him not talk to me or if we do talk, I'm going to steer the conversation to something that I want to talk about, and that's the Lord.

He sat down and at first he didn't say anything. Then he leaned over as we got into the flight and said, "So you're just going to sit there and read the Bible?" I looked at him and I said, "Yes, I think the Bible is very interesting. What do you know about the Bible?" He kind of fumbled with his answer a bit, letting me know he knew some facts about God but he didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord.

Then he started asking me questions about the Bible. At first, they were kind of easy and I was able to answer them. Then I started lifting up emergency prayers to the Lord like, "Help me find these answers, Lord." I'm going all over the Bible and reading him different scriptures. In the middle of all of that, the Lord said to me, just really pressed on my heart, "Lisa, give this man your Bible."

While I'm still witnessing to this man, I start having an argument with God. I'm like, "God, this is my Bible. This is my tear-stained, highlighted, written-in Bible. My kids have drawn pictures in this. This is my Bible. But that is a good suggestion. I'll go home, I'll buy him a Bible, I'll highlight some verses, package it up, get his address, send it to him. Go, God."

I continued to talk to Ron, but the Lord was just crystal clear, putting it on my heart: "Give this man your Bible." Eventually, I closed my Bible, I put the Bible on Ron's lap, and I said, "I think you're supposed to have my Bible." He looked at me very shocked and he said, "Why would you give what is obviously a treasured possession to a complete stranger? Why would you do that?"

I said, "I have to be honest, I don't really want you to have my Bible. But something that I've learned is in the midst of all of eternity, sometimes God pauses in the midst of all of this to touch a heart of one person. Ron, I believe God's paused for you today."

Jim Daly: Whoa.

Lisa TerKeurst: Ron told me he would read it, and then the plane landed. We exchanged business cards, he took the Bible, and got off the plane. I remember thinking, "Lord, can I chase him down to make sure he doesn't throw it away in the nearest airport trash can?" Lord was crystal clear. Anything you release into my hands will never truly be gone.

A couple of weeks later, I get a call from Ron. I was at my office, and he said, "You are never going to believe what's happened to me. I went home and I took a week off from work to read that Bible." I acted like that's what we all do, but inside I was shocked. I never heard from Ron again.

Fast-forward 24 years later, I was on tour in a little city outside of San Antonio. Three women found one of my assistants and asked if there was any way they could meet Lisa because they wanted to tell her the rest of the story if she remembers the Bible that she gave away on that plane. It was Ron's sister, a good family friend, and Ron's daughter.

They shared with me the rest of the story, that Ron wound up giving his heart to the Lord and led his entire family to Christ. Then the daughter pulled out the Bible she'd brought with her. A few years ago, her dad passed away very suddenly, and the greatest treasure he left her was my Bible. She opened it up, and I could see my handwriting and Ron's handwriting and his daughter's handwriting all throughout the Bible.

That story revisited my life at a time where I was really struggling. "God, are you here? God, do you hear my prayers? Are you in control?" God didn't have to do that. He didn't have to bring that Bible back 24 years later. Now, of course, I told the daughter she has to keep the Bible, but just the fact that I held it again and I heard the rest of the story—only God could do that.

It reminded me so powerfully that God really is in control. God really does care about us. God really is working behind the scenes in ways that we will never know all the details of. Most importantly, it truly is a fact that whatever we release into the hands of God is never truly gone. It is safe to surrender that which is outside of our control to the Lord and let the Lord do what only he can do.

We need to do our part and then we have to leave the rest to God. We need to stop carrying weight that was never meant for us to carry because it's really hard to enjoy your life when you're trying to control everything and everyone in your life. It will not be joyful. So the choice is to get it right right now while there is still time to instead of dreading your life, start enjoying your life and start surrendering to God that which is outside of your control.

Jim Daly: Lisa, so good. Thank you for being with us. This was powerful. I hope for the listeners that this is striking a chord for you. If you're living there and you're trying to do the right thing for everybody, it may be time to assess that and look at obedience rather than living in fear and control. Thanks again for being with us.

If that's where you're at, get in touch with us. We have so much help for you here at Focus on the Family. Our team of caring Christian counselors is here to listen, pray with you, and help you find a path forward with hope and peace. We have a wealth of trusted resources to come alongside you, offering biblical wisdom and practical help for your marriage, parenting, and whatever challenges your family may be facing.

One of those great resources is Lisa's terrific book, *Making Peace with What I Can't Control: Find Relief from the Exhaustion of Overthinking, Trying to Fix Others, and Wanting to Figure It All Out*. If fear, worry, overthinking, or trying to manage the choices of others has left you exhausted, this resource will help you recognize what's yours to carry and find the courage to release the rest to God.

When you make a pledge today, a gift of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Lisa's book as our way of saying thanks for being part of the ministry and helping others, too. Your gifts reach others like Jennifer, who said, "I'm a fairly new listener, and I'm so thankful God led me to Focus on the Family during my morning commute. For the past three months, your guests and topics have encouraged me so much that I arrive at work feeling like a new person each day. You've changed my life for the better, and now I'm telling my friends about Focus on the Family so they can be encouraged, too."

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John Fuller: Donate today, set up a time to talk with one of our counselors, or get other help when you call 800, the letter A, and the word family. Or online, you'll find details about how to get in touch and other helpful resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.