He's Still Working on Me

There was a song I used to sing in Sunday School as a child, and the chorus was:

"He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be.
It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars,
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars.
How loving and patient He must be, He's still working on me."

I look at how far I have traveled in my faith walk, yet there are some places that God is still diligently trying to tap out the dents in me.  The main area I struggle with most is control. I am a control freak. I like order, schedules, routine, and consistency.  To give you an idea, this is how I get us ready for a family vacation: About two weeks before our trip, I make an extremely detailed list of all the things I need to pack. This list is not only sorted by family member, but also by category. Under the "clothing" category, I even list the EXACT outfits that I will be packing for each family member, including my husband.  The category might even have a subcategory such as "pajamas" or "casual clothing".  My grocery lists are similarly organized. I have a separate list on my computer for each store, with the categories organized by store lay-out. When I get to the check out, I place my items on the register belt EXACTLY how I would like them to be bagged. It annoys me to no end if stuff just gets randomly thrown into the bag together. Ok, so you get how crazy I am....
  My husband is supposed to be coming back from Korea in the next couple weeks. We are less than 60 days away from our report no later than date in Germany. This means that even if Jeff comes home when he is supposed to, we still have less than a month to do all the things we need to do before we PCS overseas.  Big UH-OH: Jeff doesn't have his orders yet. He was told that AFPC is still processing the orders.  So that basically means that not only can we not schedule the vast majority of things that we need to schedule in order to move, but also that Jeff does not currently have a final out date from Korea. I have no idea when he is coming home, and apparently nobody else does either. 
   A horrible side-effect of being a control-freak is a lack of patience.  As a person who thinks things should have been done yesterday, it absolutely kills when the time-table is out of my hands. I hate waiting!  It makes me stressed and anxious. However, I recognize these traits as my failure to trust in God and His timing.  I've been praying a much more lately for God to refine some of these impurities in me. When I was having problems trusting in His ability to provide, I prayed earnestly and He answered my prayer by using a fellow Believer to bless our family.  I have also been praying to have the ability to truly trust in His timing. I am sure that it is no coincidence that I have to deal with all this uncertainty about Jeff's homecoming and our move.  God is using these circumstances to refine some of my impurities.
 How does a control-freak learn to trust God? By having the control taken away.  I have absolutely no say in when Jeff gets his orders. I can blame it on the Air Force, but as one of my fellow military spouses likes to remind me, "it is really God who is in control".  I can get frustrated and anxious or I can choose to take in this lesson and embrace relinquishing my place in the driver's seat. As my husband so wisely reminds me, "Everything will work out. It always does."  God never gives up on me.  He will keep banging out my dents, even when I resist and think I can do it myself. I want to close with another verse from the song I mentioned above:

"In the mirror of His Word reflections that I see
Make me wonder why He never gave up on me.
He loves me as I am and helps me when I pray
Remember He's the Potter, I'm the clay."