When one person wants good things for another person, does that lead to a desire for control? In my relationships with my children, my parents, and my spouse, I’d say Yes. I have felt controlled by every family member, and in my turn I have tried to control them—often because I want good things for them. I want my kids to develop skills that will help them thrive as adults. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want them to be kind and confident and responsible. I want my spouse to get plenty of sleep and maintain a healthy weight. I want my parents to enjoy life.

But is the basis of all these good desires the fear of what may come if these things don’t happen—if things aren’t this way? Do I want a better marriage for my friend because I fear the marriage she’s in? Do I want better health for my spouse because I fear what poor health would do to our lives? Do I want my friend Alana to have better mental health because I fear her depression will affect the atmosphere of our small group? When life goes off the rails it may cost time, money, reputation, quality of life. Isn’t it better to stay on the rails?

I used to think so, but now I’m not sure. At what cost does a person stay on the rails? What is lost to the god of control? I don’t want to admit it, but likely what is lost is what I was trying to protect—peace, safety, belonging.

God’s way of moving in the world hardly resembles mine. He wants good things for us but has no desire to control. He is not fearful, because He is love. He is not trying to guard His resources or His reputation—He already gave both to us. God’s love is a love intertwined with loss and longing. It’s a love that accepts pain, and repeats the same loving action a 100th time even though there was no response the first 99 times. It is a voracious love, eager for more encounters.

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Stacey Bess spent seven years teaching transient or homeless children, grades K-12, in a homeless shelter. Many of these children attended The School With No Name for only 90 days, the typical length of stay at the shelter. In her memoir, Nobody Don’t Love Nobody, Bess introduces Karen, a woman she connected with at the shelter through conversation and nights out. Later, when Karen had a baby, she moved in with Bess’s mom, who helped care for baby Liza. Bess and her mother provided safety, midnight taxi service, food and clothing. They did everything they knew to do to help Karen create a healthy life. But things didn’t turn out how they hoped. In Bess’s words:

Karen brought us to feel and know about tragedy in a completely new way. We wanted desperately to fix her. I picker her up every time she called, day or night, and my mother put up with her tantrums and drug use, both of us full of hope and confident in the power of love alone to heal all wounds. But what we learned from Karen was that sometimes the giving has to be enough.

Nobody Don’t Love Nobody, page 42

Karen didn’t lean in to a healthy life. Love didn’t “do the trick.” My immediate response is that Bess and her mom were overly optimistic. They needed better boundaries and a reality check.

But Bess’s conclusion was, “sometimes the giving has to be enough.” In other words, what they did was enough. Nothing was lost.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.” This feels right and true to me, but … isn’t the value of God’s love that it saves us? What is the point if no one responds? Bess and her mother loved Karen and Liza, but it sure looks like the saving part didn’t happen. It is often said that Jesus would have died to save only one. What about none?

After “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” we have, “so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Everlasting life—even if interpreted as fullness of life rather than living for billions of years and then more—is an outcome. Love does something. What happens if there is no “so that”? Could it be that God’s love affects us even if it doesn’t save us? Is that effect worthwhile?

I have no record of Karen’s inner world, but I’d bet she knew those women loved her. She certainly trusted them. Does God covet our trust more than a change in our behavior? More than a longterm relationship? Does He want us to know He loves us, more than He wants to save us? That could change everything.

A quick look in my Strong’s concordance reveals that the word “plan” isn’t in the Bible. I’m not by any means an advocate of returning to the King James Version of the Bible, but I find it intriguing that much-beloved Jeremiah 29:11, usually quoted as, “I know the plans I have for you,” reads this way in the KJV: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil.” Maybe God’s will isn’t a plan, so much as it is His thoughts toward us. Maybe Jesus showed us what God’s will looked like, more than what God’s plan entailed. Maybe love, the absence of control, leads directly to spontaneous liking, which is the soil of belonging.

Spontaneity is the antithesis of control. It requires presence more than planning, and curiosity more than control. As humans we often forgo belonging in pursuit of acceptance, “the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group.” Pursuit of acceptance gives us control. If I can perform or conform my way into a group—if I can make myself suitable—I have some control. Belonging cannot be wrangled, and has a rather slippery definition: “an affinity for a place or situation.” I looked up the word “affinity” to put some flesh on that very short definition of belonging. Affinity is, “a spontaneous or natural liking for something or someone.” So, belonging is spontaneous or natural liking for a place or situation—or, I would add, for a person.

“Spontaneous liking” sounds terribly out of control. But it leaves room for imperfection and it embodies joy. If love is the pain of not being in control, is belonging the joy of embracing imperfection? Maybe I can want good things for a person—work for them, even—but ultimately allow the giving to be enough, and allow trust and belonging to matter more than saving.