letting go of control

With my therapist yesterday what came up was that I needed to find ways of further letting go of thinking I can control things. I said things like:

• Nothing I can do will change the course of John's illness.
• Nothing I can do will bring John to peace or spiritual growth.
• Nothing I can do will give me back control over my own life.

It felt right to say those things, to lower my expectations of myself.

Someone recommended to me Learning to Fail: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, by Phillip Simmons, who had ALS. He writes in the foreword:

When we stop seeing the world as a "problem" to be solved, when instead we open our hearts to the mystery of our common suffering, we may find ourselves where we least expected to be: in a world transformed by love.