I Am the Queen

Have you ever felt as if your life was a great big machine filled with hundreds or maybe thousands of small, moving parts that all need to work together to function? Do you ever feel like the mechanic who has to know, identify, prevent, and fix any problems anywhere or the whole thing will fall apart?

Or maybe you feel like you're the conductor of a large orchestra and your job is to orchestrate the comings and goings, entrances and exits, and sound and silence of a hundred living people. If you do something wrong, or if someone ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it will ruin the effect. 

Perhaps you feel like the director of a film responsible for every decision about timing, setup, casting, location, and script. Talk about a thousand moving parts! You have to get all the right people in the right places at the right time to get the right lighting for the right shot with the right sound and the right emotion and inflection so that you can add the right music to the right sound effects in it's right place in the whole of the movie in order to get it right. 

Have you ever felt like that? The stress, the pressure, the millions of decisions that need to be made right now or else everything will come crashing down around you?

I certainly have. I would wager that for most of my late-teen and adult life I've acted as the director of my own film, working to orchestrate every detail in order to produce academy-award winning results. I've had a dream and vision for what and where my life should be, and while small details of the script have been changed over the years, the overall goal has remained the same--to create a well directed life where everything works together as planned to produce a sense of success, camaraderie, and stability mixed with just the right amount of tasteful humor.

It's a hard job, folks. 

It's been especially hard for me lately as my previously well-directed life has started branching out in all sorts of new and unexpected directions and I can't always make the characters do what I tell them to! I can't force people to respond just so! The story I was planning, that previously had a reasonable three main characters, now has at least eight, each one demanding a place in the script and then improvising at will. Suddenly directing my life just so became nearly impossible because I never knew who was going to do what and if, or when, they would conflict. Just this last week, exhausted by the demands, I sat down with a red pen and started rewriting my script. I managed to temporarily kill off three of the characters so I could focus on the other five and I was feeling pretty good about my life on Monday night. I could do five characters. That was manageable. 

Tuesday morning dawned bright and very early, but I was ready for it. I was up and crossing things off my list, prepping for scenes later in the week. I knew just what needed to be done, when it needed to be done, and the best order in which to do it which was why just before 8-o-clock I was headed out to my front garden to water the blueberry bushes where, at just after 8, I had the most extraordinary, unplanned, and unimaginable experience of my life. One I feel is best explained by sharing the entry I made in my herb journal. 

"Live bee in ear, down to the eardrum. Not visible to the naked eye. Removed by pouring water into the ear and allowing the bee to float back to the surface where it could be pulled out whole with tweezers. Luckily no sting in ear (bee stung throat & left stinger embedded) & bee removed whole and intact."

Yes, my friends, yes. I had a bee in my ear. 

I have never experienced anything quite like it before. I think in hindsight the pain was not as bad as it felt in the moment, but mixed with the terror of knowing that a live, buzzing insect with a stinger was inside my ear, banging against my eardrum, the pain and fear were overwhelming. I am usually quite calm during a crisis, only breaking down after the danger has passed. I've actually been known to direct events even while bleeding out all over the kitchen floor. But as the bee crawled ever deeper into my ear, I broke. I lost all control and as my mother expeditiously orchestrated the removal of the bee I sobbed into the carpet in the middle of the hallway. 

Thankfully rational thought and humor returned soon after the bee was out of my brain and, as the treatment for bee stings and damaged eardrums progressed, I found myself alternately laughing at the ridiculousness of the story and crying from the pain. 

Of course, once I was laughing it gave everyone else permission to laugh and soon my family members were all snorting and giggling or rolling their eyes at yet another Esther mishap. One of the first things my sister said was, "I can't wait to read the blog post you're going to write about this." My response was, "What makes you think I'm writing a blog post about this? There's no life lesson here!"

Though, I'm now beginning to suspect my sister knows me a little too well, because the moment she mentioned turning an unbelievable story about bee flying into my ear into a blog post my mind was hyper-focused on figuring out what to write. 

I had no luck, though. I couldn't even come up with a suitably impressive title. All I could think about was being bee-brained and I was praying that was better than being bird-brained. 

Bee brained.

Hive mind. 

Queen bee. 

The word "queen" is a fascinating one. The word itself seems to refer to someone who has a significant amount of power and control, someone in charge of directing and orchestrating the workings of a country or, in this case, the hive. Yet, if you really look at the queens in history and in our world, they don't actually have that much power. They have the illusion of control with no authority to back it up or force things to happen. 

I'm not sure how much any of you know about bees, but I need to give you an unscientific science lesson. While there is a female bee, known as the queen, who is larger than the other bees and seems to direct the inner workings of the hive, she is not in charge. She is well-respected, well cared for, and well-protected because the worker bees know she is the life of their hive. Without her they die in 6 weeks. But she doesn't make any major decisions for the benefit of the hive. She doesn't tell the workers where to go or what to do or when to do it. 

It is the worker bees, all the many thousands of them, that make the decisions for the hive. How? I don't think we actually know how the bees communicate and function so well without a clear leader directing everything, but that mystery of the universe is not the focus for today. 

The point is, the queen is not in charge. She doesn't direct, orchestrate, or fix anything. She only ever leaves the hive once in her life. She doesn't feed herself, she doesn't groom herself, she doesn't make her own decisions. The worker bees do. And if she tried to do something for herself for once, like leave the hive to take a bathroom break, or help with honey production she would actually hinder and halt the function of the hive. If she kept that up too long she would be replaced, which is a nice way of saying the worker bees would murder her. 

I'm dead serious. 

As I lay on the floor on Tuesday, with baking soda covering the stings on my neck and water in my ear, I couldn't stop thinking about how quickly all my plans could change. Remember, I'd formulated a timeline for everything I needed to do that day. My plans were set and going well, but all it took was one small bee to radically alter the direction of my day. I might have made plans, but I had absolutely no control over whether or not those plans would actually happen. It was shocking to realize that I am not the director of my life story. I'm not the conductor. I'm not the mechanic. 

I am the queen. 

I do not and cannot orchestrate everything or anything. 

I can try. I certainly do try to be in control. I thought I was helping myself reach my goals faster. I thought I was progressing and accomplishing things the way I was supposed to. However, after this week, I'm beginning to suspect that the more I try to control and direct and force things to happen my way, the more I hinder and halt true progress. 

I talked to God after the bee was out of my ear. You kind of have to talk to God after something like that happens. I was feeling disappointed that I hadn't accomplished all I thought I could accomplish. I was tired of days of not feeling well (I'd just been recovering from a bad cold, a foot injury, and a round of nasty mosquito bites). I was scared I might not be moving my life in the right direction. I was begging Him for guidance and understanding. Could He please tell me why strange tragedies kept befalling me? Could He please stop me from getting sick or injured and let me get back to working on my life?

His answer was an unmistakable, unequivocal "No." He would not tell me why I kept getting sick or injured. He wouldn't stop me from it, and He was not going to let me get back to my life. Because I am not in charge. He is. And apparently He has a plan and He's orchestrating things just how He wants them. He is the director, the conductor, and the mechanic, and I am only the queen. If I would just stop trying to direct, control, and orchestrate things maybe He could actually finish His script, but my efforts to do things myself, my way, and in my time kept hindering and halting his plans! 

Over the last two days I've had the following mantra playing through my mind -- I am at peace just where I am. I accept my good, knowing that all my needs and desires will be fulfilled. 

For the longest time, I haven't been at peace where I am. I've had this feeling that I need to be constantly doing something or going somewhere in order to be good enough. I couldn't trust that I was good. I couldn't accept my inherent good. I also didn't believe that if I just let God direct my life, all my needs and desires would be filled. I thought I needed to do something or be something to receive my desires and accomplish my goals. 

I thought I needed to be the worker bee. Always moving, always working, always planning. But I am not the worker bee. I am the queen and it is my job to be just where I am, doing only what God tells me. "For [His] thoughts are not [my] thoughts, neither are [my] ways [His] ways... for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [His] ways higher than [my] ways, and [His] thoughts than [my] thoughts."

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

Isaiah 55:8-9; 1 Timothy 1:17