I’ve Got This

February 17, 2016

“It’s all a façade.” That’s a really funny line from the movie, My Fellow Americans, when actor, John Heard, who plays the bumbling Vice President of the United States, Ted Matthews, smugly admits that his seeming ineptness is truly a ruse. The hilarity of the moment happens when he incorrectly pronounces the word “façade.” Instead of pronouncing it with a soft “c,” he says it with a hard “k,” and the scene is priceless. In that split second, it’s very obvious that Vice President Ted Matthews doesn’t have it together at all. And in reality, neither do we.
We think we do. From birth until we cross the Jordan, we seem to think, “I’ve got this.”

Take for instance a new parent changing their baby’s diaper the first time. There’s the inevitable fumbling of unfolding the diaper coupled with the battle of the tape—add in the squirming legs and crying baby. It’s exhausting. But after a few tries, success ensues and the grateful first-timer, lets out a sigh of relief and sometimes the fanciful words, “I’ve got this.” Any older and more seasoned parent, at this point, chuckles to themselves, “Oh no, you don’t.”

And so it goes from there. The two year old, stomping his or her feet while exclaiming to the world, or so it seems because the decibel level is so high, “I can do it myself!” when, as a matter of fact, they are indeed saying, “I’m in control. I’ve got this.”

We all, in one-way or another, express it. From the teenager or anyone for that matter, inexplicably driving 90 miles an hour down a country road, to a professional racecar driver, even to a airline pilot (how could they possibly feel this way? A Boeing 737 has a takeoff weight of 75 tons and a Boeing 747 of 450 tons), the underlying feeling, the inescapable subconscious thought is, “I’m in control. I’ve got this.” Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Even with the laws of science intact….

Life is too…”unexpected”—the good and the bad. That being said—the unpredictable happens all the time. The lottery is won…unexpectedly. The in-laws drop by…unexpectedly. Storms happen. One house is left standing, the next one, not. The stock market goes up. It plummets. The rollercoaster of life can be terrifying if we think about it too much. Or it could be exciting because we never know what’s around the next blind curve. And we are never really in control. Only God is.

A voice teacher once told me that to have a beautiful, clear, free sounding voice, you have to let go of trying to control what you think your voice should sound like, what it should be. Maybe that’s how life should be too.

The State Farm commercial “Never” sweetly sums up life’s unexpectedness.