The Illusion of Control

Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.

Control. It’s what we crave, isn’t it? We wrestle with chaos, trying to bend life to our will like kids in a sandbox, pulling all our toys close, arranging them just so. We line everything up, thinking that if we can just keep it ordered, perfect, we’ll win the game. But let’s be honest—control is what we think we have.

I’ve been there. My last season coaching high school track and field. I thought I had it all figured out. We were a small school, graduating maybe fifty students a year, but we had something that most small schools don’t have: depth. Hard working athletes stacked from top to bottom. Not a single blue chip athlete, but a team—an actual team—ready to qualify for every relay, and most running events. We were good. We knew it.

And I was in control. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

It was a long season, Ohio winters biting at our heels, but we worked. I worked. Every week, I was crunching numbers, breaking down workouts, holding meetings with coaches and captains, my eyes fixed on one thing—winning the state championship. I stayed up late grading papers and planning lessons, but my mind was always circling back to one thing: What else could I control? How could I out-plan, out-think, out-prepare the competition? Caffeine in one hand, chocolate in the other, I built a strategy that would surely win and a stomach was stirring wildly.

By the time the championships rolled around, we had the greatest number of athletes ever qualified from our school. We had an army. Not a single state champion in the bunch, but we had something better—hard nosed athletes who could compete in every relay, who could grind it out for points. That’s where we could beat teams like Colonel Crawford, the favorites to win. They had studs—an unstoppable thrower in the shot put and discus, a middle-distance phenom, two sprinters that could go head-to-head with anyone. But that was the thing. When you’ve got a kid smashing state meet records, you’re not sweating the details. You send them out, and you watch them work.

Sweating the Small Stuff

Because when you don’t have those one or two athletes who can walk into a championship and know they’re going to win, you scramble. You calculate, recalibrate, try to squeeze out every point possible from every angle. I’d sit down with my captains, week after week, planning, predicting, and pushing. I thought I could control it all.

But then Isaiah happened. Colonel Crawford’s juggernaut thrower. He set a state meet record in the discus, sending that thing 193 feet like it weighed nothing. Not to be outdone, he won the shot put by over four feet. Then there was Carson, their middle-distance runner, cruising to a two-second victory in the mile. Everything I couldn’t control was unfolding right in front of me, and none of the hours I had put in, none of the sleepless nights, none of the calculations mattered in that moment.

I had been running on empty, fueled by the belief that if I just tried harder, worked longer, I could control the outcome. But control wasn’t what I had. It was something else—and it was eating me alive.

Control: Better Known as PRIDE

But here’s the thing about control—it’s not really control at all. It’s pride. Pride sneaks in, disguised as meticulous planning, as hard work, as being the one who carries the weight of it all. Pride whispers that if you can just control every variable, nothing will go wrong. It tells you that your plans, your strategies, your late-night obsession over every detail are foolproof. And so, you overextend. You push yourself, convinced that if you don’t do it, no one else will.

That’s exactly where I was. I was up late every night, grading, planning, reworking our strategy, driving myself into the ground—burning out. Pride convinced me that I had to control it all because my plans were infallible. But that’s the danger, isn’t it? When things don’t go as expected, it hits harder. Mental exhaustion creeps in, and you start to feel the cracks in your armor. Every race that didn’t go our way, every point I couldn’t account for—it all became a reminder that my control was nothing but an illusion.

And that’s the catch: control—or the illusion of it—feeds the exhaustion. It drains you, emotionally, mentally, even physically, because you’re constantly battling something you can’t win. That’s the pride. The more you think you can control, the more you lose yourself in the process.

Victory and Defeat: The Final Relay

I could tell you about how every relay that day shattered school records. How our 4x800 team almost set a state record when they won their event, running their hearts out as if the world depended on it. We were rolling—our sprint relays, despite not having a single standout star, clawed their way onto the awards podium, earning us points no one thought we’d get. And then there was Matt, our middle distance runner, the senior captain who left everything on the track, taking third in the 800m. Jordan, the cross country captain, did the same in the grueling 3200m, also finishing third. We were scoring points, stacking them up, inching closer to the title that had felt so elusive all season.

All we needed to do was win the 4x400, the final event of the meet. N Robinson Colonel Crawford—the team we were chasing all day—wasn't even in that race. It was ours. Our moment. We had posted the fastest time in prelims the day before, and that was with an alternate. Confidence was buzzing through the team. We could almost feel the trophy in our hands. We were ready to end this.

And as that last relay—on the last day of my last high school coaching event—began, everything fell into place. Our team was flying. We were leading, setting a blistering pace, even on track to set a state record. We could taste the victory, the culmination of months of work, hours of planning, and every late-night session where I thought I had control over all the details.

But in the final moments of the race, just before the finish line, Columbus Academy came charging. Out of nowhere, they surged past us. We had given everything, but it wasn’t enough. They beat us, just at the line. And with that, we also lost the team title by one point. We were fast enough top beat the existing state record, but not good enough to beat the maroon Vikings from Columbus Academy.

Proverbs 16: Control is an Illusion

I’ve been writing every day for 16 days now, digging into the wisdom of the Proverbs, trying to understand how these ancient truths apply to the stories of my life. And here’s what I’ve learned from Proverbs 16:1, Proverbs 16:3, and Proverbs 16:9.

Proverbs 16:1 says, "The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord." When I think about all the hours I spent planning, obsessing over every detail of that season, I realize now that it wasn’t the planning that was wrong. We need plans, we need direction. But what I missed was that the final outcome—the answer—was never fully mine to control. No matter how much we prepare, there’s always a point where the result is beyond us.

Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." That’s the lesson I wish I had fully understood. I was doing the work, that much is true. But I wasn’t committing it to anything greater than my own vision. I was holding too tightly, thinking that my effort alone could carry us to victory. But the truth is, our plans are only as strong as our willingness to trust that not every outcome is in our hands. Sometimes, the real work is in letting go.

And then there’s Proverbs 16:9, which says, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." This one hits hardest. I thought I could guide our team every step of the way. I thought I could chart our course to the state championship. But in the end, there were steps along the way I couldn’t foresee. Like Columbus Academy surging at the last second. Like the fact that we set a state record and still came up short.

What I’ve learned from these proverbs is that control—the thing I was chasing—is an illusion. It’s pride disguised as effort, and when you cling too tightly to that illusion, you lose sight of the bigger picture. What’s within my control is how I prepare, how I respond, and how I guide my team through the uncertainty. The rest? The rest isn’t mine to own.