By Dan Kreienkamp
Editor’s Note: Dan submitted this article before the disruptive safety precautions regarding COVID-19 were put into place. The topic is even more relevant than it was at the time, albeit in a slightly different context.
Students finishing high school are often dealing with their first crack at autonomy (seizing control and taking responsibility) in their own lives. It is natural for human beings to desire control, and when we don’t have control, we often become restless. How much we control often has to do with our circumstances, which is one of the two categories that all stressors fall into (the other being “expectations,” which I will tackle in another article).
We get a taste of this when we first start driving. It was amazing to finally jettison the parent in the passenger seat, to choose both where and how to drive, and finally to play “Bohemian Rhapsody” as loudly as I wanted (I’m really not that old; it’s just a classic).
As a student, I couldn’t wait for the next stage of my life to begin. I was going to be in control of everything. No longer would I need to worry about any kind of curfew or remembering to check in with my parents to ask permission for every move.
Of course, with more freedom came more responsibility. I no longer had my mom to wake me up if I would be late to class (my roommate didn’t help with that either). One reason students just out of high school struggle with issues like stress, anxiety, and depression is that there is a realization that now more than ever before, they are in control. If relationships go poorly or if the grades go down, they have only one place to look: the mirror. That image can become more and more distorted when they believe in the illusion of control. Yes, control can be an illusion. It doesn’t mean that personal responsibility goes out the window, but people often focus on their failings and their own sin, and it brings them down.
On a mental health level, we don’t always consider that we can’t control everything. If we take time to write down our struggles and worries and consider how much we actually control, we find that we really don’t have authority over as much as we think we do. It’s a good exercise to encourage our students to do.
However, what I really believe helps is when we change our perspective on control entirely. Jesus does this for us in Luke 8:22–25. It’s a short story where the disciples are with Jesus in a boat, a storm strikes, and everyone freaks out because they think they’re going to die (except Jesus, who is asleep). It’s truly a situation they can’t control. Sometimes I imagine myself as a disciple in that boat. I look at the storm surrounding me and wish I had made a different choice. Maybe I’d be bailing water like crazy, trying to get others to help. I probably would have woken up Jesus with a bucket in my hand, expecting him to bail water too. That’s when I realize that in stormy circumstances, I am not in control—he is. Jesus calms the storm, and I realize that he is always in the boat with me.
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