When Control Masquerades as Connection

What my daughter taught me about trust (and why we reach for control when we’re afraid): A reflection on safety, surrender, and what happens when we mistake control for connection—plus the surprising gift of being thrown through the air.

The Gift of Losing Control

A lot of my clients describe feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or simply out of control. And in a world like ours, that makes sense. So much feels unpredictable—our health, our relationships, the headlines, even our own emotions. Control becomes the illusion we reach for to feel safe.

But one day, the Lord gave me an image that reframed everything.

I was playing with my daughter, Ava. She loves when I throw her onto the bed. She calls it “yeeting.” (Y-E-E-T.) She runs, I scoop her up, toss her into the air, and for a split second she’s weightless—completely out of control.

And yet, she laughs.

When she’s flying through the air, she’s not anxious about her lack of control. She’s exhilarated by it. Why? Because she trusts me. She knows my heart, my strength, and my delight in her. Her joy isn’t in being in control—it’s in being safe while not in control.

That’s what the Lord showed me:You can experience a lack of control without fear when you trust the goodness of the One who holds you.

For Ava, the moment of “flying” builds security, not anxiety. Each throw actually strengthens her nervous system’s trust that freedom can coexist with safety. And that’s resilience—the capacity to be held, to surrender without collapse.

So many of us mistake control for safety because we’ve been hurt when we weren’t in control. We learned that powerlessness equals danger. But in God’s hands, powerlessness can become peace.

Powerlessness isn’t a wound when it’s shared with the One who is power itself.

When Control Becomes Our Connection

When you think about it, so many of the behaviors we call “coping”—pornography, substance use, even compulsive productivity or emotional caretaking—are really about connection.

But it’s connection in a space where we feel in control.

There’s a deep and often unconscious reason for that. When someone’s sense of safety has been fractured by anxiety, trauma, grief, or relational pain, the nervous system collapses inward. What once was open and trusting becomes guarded. And because the human heart is wired for attachment, the impulse doesn’t disappear—it just finds other outlets.

People don’t pursue these things because they’re wicked.They pursue them because they once worked.

They provided imperfect safety—a way to feel alive again, or at least not alone, without the threat of being hurt. That drink, that image, that text thread, that night out, that little ritual of escape… it gave a sense of comfort and control, even if it came at the cost of intimacy. It was a way to regulate what love once dysregulated.

We often say people “cope,” but coping is really a kind of collapse—the body trying to regulate what the soul can’t yet face. And until healing comes, that collapse is grace in disguise. The body is protecting the heart from a story it’s not ready to tell.

Even the self-destructive patterns are, in a way, self-protective.

Because the truth is, every compulsion carries a cry for connection—for comfort, for understanding, for belonging. It’s not the behavior itself that’s demonic; it’s the isolation that makes us believe we have to do it alone.

That’s why we misinterpret even love when it finally comes.We don’t trust it.We brace against it.We flinch at the hand that means to bless.

And because we can’t safely connect in relationship, we create spaces where we can—in fantasy, intoxication, or control. That’s why support groups can feel holy even when messy. Around a cigarette or a beer, strangers confess things they’ve never said to a priest. For a moment, the defenses drop. Connection breaks through the crust of shame.

It’s human. It’s holy ground, even if it smells like smoke.

The Presence That Heals

But what actually heals us isn’t merely exposure—it’s presence.The presence of people who aren’t afraid of our pain.The presence of hope embodied in others who’ve walked through darkness and now carry light without judgment.The presence of God who meets us, not at our best, but right in the act of hiding.

Because when love enters, control no longer has to protect us.

Addiction, lust, or rage lose their pull not because the temptation vanishes, but because communion becomes more compelling. When the heart finally feels safe enough to rest, it no longer needs to manage connection—it can receive it.

And that’s deliverance.Not the casting out of darkness, but the coming in of Light.Not confrontation, but communion.

True deliverance doesn’t shame the survival strategy—it fulfills it. It reveals that what you reached for in panic was pointing toward what you were created for in peace.

Because we were made not just to be safe,but to belong.

Flying in the Father’s Arms

This is the paradox of trust: the more you release, the more secure you become.

When you’re with Aslan, you don’t need to roar louder to feel safe—you can simply rest in His. When you’re with the Father, you don’t need to manage the air beneath you—you can laugh in mid-flight.

Maybe that’s what deliverance really looks like—not grasping for control, but rediscovering the joy of being held. The moment the soul stops clutching and starts trusting, fear loses its grip.

We don’t need to be in control when God is.We just need to stay attuned enough to see what the Father is doing—and let Him throw us into the freedom we were made for.

Because the war is already won.And the safest place in the world is mid-air, laughing in your Father’s arms.

The war is over.You’re allowed to rest in the care of the One who’s already won.