Resigning my control of the Agency of others

I think I’m on to something. All these years I needed to resign as the self-imposed General Manager of the Universe. I named my blog after my self-imposed title as a tongue-in-cheek, humorous to only me, title. But what I didn’t realize was that God inspired this title as a lesson.

I’m finally listening.

For the past few weeks I have been working on letting go of the things I can’t control and focusing on the things I can control. It sure makes life a whole lot simpler!

Agency is a big deal! Agency is the ability and privilege that God gives us to act for ourselves. We need to make choices and live with the result of those choices to learn in this life. With it, we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27). Lehi explained that God “hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon,”  (2 Nephi 2:14) and that we are in the category of things created to act. (2 Nephi 2:16).

Although we are free to make many choices, we do not get to choose the consequences of said choices. We also do not get to force other people to make the choices we want them to make. Children, parents, neighbors, communities all need to makes their own learning plan with the choices they want to make. Forcing them to “learn” a certain way is not effective.

Thus, I am working on resigning my control of agency… at least the agency of others.

My friends over at 13seasons.org have been inspirational in helping me let go of what I can’t control and taking more responsibility for what I can control. We are coming to the end of the “Accept Agency” season and I have enjoyed pondering agency, looking for ways to honor the agency of others, and trying new methods of building a stronger connection to agency that I have found on their website. Everyone should check them out!

This was the live video they posted at the beginning of “Accepting Agency” season. It inspired me.

Resigning my control over the agency of others will take some work. We all want choices, but we don’t necessarily want others to have choice… unless they are the choices we want them to make. But, we can’t control what others do. We can control how we react to what others do. It takes work!

This is a hard concept to master… taking responsibility is tough!

“They make me so mad!” News flash. No one can MAKE you mad. No one can make you act in any particular way. Something happens, someone says something, you make a choice, and a flash of emotion is ignited (sometimes like a bomb). You choose what to do with that emotion. Do you run with it? Do you stuff it down for another day? Do you build a wall with it? Do you redirect your thoughts and choose a different reaction?

Elder David A. Bednar taught, “We have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity for independent action and choice. Endowed with agency, you and I are agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon. To believe that someone or something can make us feel offended, angry, hurt, or bitter diminishes our moral agency and transforms us into objects to be acted upon. As agents, however, you and I have the power to act and to choose how we will respond.”  “And Nothing Shall Offend Them,” General Conference, Oct. 2006.

Thus, for the past few weeks I have been resigning and letting go as I catch myself “blaming others, making excuses, complaining, feeling sorry for myself, or feeling anger.” I am healing. I am letting go of stuck emotions. I am taking time to pause, take a breath, and choose to be more Christlike to others and to myself instead. It takes time. It takes effort. However, the season of “Accepting Agency” has been a huge blessing and a big part of my healing.

Letting go and resigning as the General Manger of the agency of others has been a miracle in my life over the past few weeks!