As much as it pains me to admit it, I'm something of a control freak.

I don't want to be this way, and in my heart I don't believe I truly am. Yet in certain aspects of life, my need to always be the one steering the boat, calling the shots and choosing the final destination takes over, and I'm all but helpless to step back and submit to anyone or anything else.

This streak in me is so single-minded, so obstinate in its nature, that it sometimes results in willful, conscious actions that I know are misguided at best, asinine at worst. Yet they're active, and in the stubborn, desperate mind of a control freak, that's better than sitting around waiting for things to sort themselves out.

Which is probably why one of the most-often turned-to chapters in my little quadruple combination is Proverbs 3, where the fifth verse has been scratched over with a red pencil in an attempt to make sure I never miss it:

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart," it says, "and lean not unto thine own understanding."

"Lean not unto thine own understanding." Not only do those words somehow smooth the frazzled edges of my worried mind, they also tend to remind me of the many, many times in my life when my own understanding — destinations I tried so desperately to steer toward, no matter how often I was blown off course — would have gotten me everything I wanted and nothing I needed.

I think of job or educational opportunities I prayed fervently for and didn't get, of relationships I tried so hard to make work, to no avail, and of countless other blessings I wished and hoped for that never became a reality for me.

Then, with the benefit of hindsight, I trace a line from those unanswered prayers directly to some of the most cherished experiences of my life — blessings I wouldn't trade for anything, that I now see could never have happened if the things I had wanted so desperately had materialized.

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And those are the moments when I come closest to burying the control freak in the sand of wisdom and good sense and really, finally learning what it means to submit.

Sadly, those moments don't tend to last much longer than my next trial, but they are steps. And as halting and uneven as those steps may be, I'd like to believe that they're moving me toward the kind of faithful act of meekness that Elder Neal A. Maxwell often spoke of: "The submission of one's will," he said in an oft-quoted example, "is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar."

Perhaps that's why doing so can be such a struggle for people like me, whose instincts tell them to hang on as tightly as possible and trust the outcome to no one but themselves. But as often happens, experience in this case trumps instinct: Looking at my life today, I see very few details that I would have chosen for myself 10 years ago, yet I'm supremely grateful for those details — all of them.

And even though I can't yet see the lines connecting these details of today to what experience teaches me will be treasured blessings of the future, I'm somehow still sure they're there — and all I need to control is my knee-jerk desire to change their trajectory.

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