I Did It My Way
There is a woman at our favorite resort in Cancun who sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” And it makes me cry in a way that makes me glad that it’s always dark in the lounge where she sings.
This is not occasionally or only if I happen to be emotional that evening. It’s immediate.
She sings it beautifully, but it is more than that. There is something in the way she sings it that reaches a place somewhere beneath the words. It feels soulful enough to hurt. And over the course of our time there, hearing her sing it has become important to me.
I have wondered why.
I know the song. Everyone knows the song. It is the retrospective of a man looking back over his life - the choices, the losses, the loves, the mistakes, the risks - and standing at the end of it able to say that whatever else might be true, he lived it.
He chose. He acted. He endured. It was his life, and he did it his way.
When I apply that to my life, sometimes doing things “my way” has meant making choices other people did not understand. There are things I could have said or done that might have changed the way I was understood within certain situations. But sometimes there are people you love more than you need to be understood.
I have learned to live with that.
That, too, is doing it my way. It is mine to discern. Mine to answer for. Mine to carry before God.
And I have spent a lot of time lately living in circumstances where sheer force of will cannot guarantee the outcome. That is difficult; I have a pretty strong will.
I am good at doing. I ask another question. I read another article. I knock on another door and press whomever is on the other side. And if that door doesn’t open, I will probably find another one. No, I will find another one.
There is something in me that desperately wants to reach the end of every difficult story knowing that I did everything I possibly could.
That is another version of my way.
And then this Sunday, Scripture handed me a vineyard.
In Isaiah, God has painstakingly tended His vineyard. He has chosen fertile ground, cleared away the stones, planted the best vines, built a watchtower, and prepared the winepress. John Bergsma points out that Isaiah’s vineyard song is, at its heart, a love song. The vineyard belongs to the Beloved. It has been cultivated with intention and care.
Then Jesus picks up the same image in Matthew’s Gospel.
A landowner plants a vineyard. He puts a hedge around it, digs a winepress, builds a tower, leases it to tenants, and goes away. And somewhere along the way, the tenant forgets something rather important: it is not his vineyard.
He has been entrusted with it, and he is responsible for tending it. But he doesn’t own it. That differentiation has been sitting heavily with me. Likely one of the hardest spiritual lessons for those of us who love deeply and take responsibility seriously is learning the difference between stewardship and ownership.
My marriage, our children, my work, our plans, our future. All of my carefully researched solutions and hoped-for outcomes.
My vineyard.
Except it isn’t. It has been entrusted to me.
Recently, in the middle of an already difficult season, I was admonished that worry is not a fruit of the Spirit. It was one of those statements rooted in something true and yet delivered in a way that was hurtful and not at all helpful.
I know the fruits of the Spirit. I know that peace is among them.
I also know that I love deeply. And sometimes love looks a whole lot like concern and responsibility. It wakes me in the middle of the night. In fact, it did last night for almost three hours. Sometimes it researches. Sometimes it watches closely. Sometimes the mind runs through every possible outcome because the person attached to those outcomes matters more to you than you know how to put into words.
And we have to be very careful with one another here.
There is a way to speak theological truth into another person’s suffering that offers them Christ, and there is a way to speak theological truth that simply gives a hurting person one more thing to manage and feel guilty about.
That is why something Fr. Mike said in his reflection on today’s readings struck me so deeply. He distinguished between concern and worry.
Concern asks: What can I do?
Worry asks: What if?
I know both of those questions well. I was wrestling with them last night actually.
And suddenly Paul’s words to the Philippians sound less like an indictment and more like an invitation:
“Have no anxiety at all…”
It would be easy to stop there.
See? You shouldn’t be worrying.
That phrase is a wound my heart - the heart God made exactly this way - has carried for many years.
But Paul doesn’t stop there.
“In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
In other words:
Bring it here.
That thing is real and it IS concerning. Bring Me the thing keeping you awake. Bring Me the outcome you cannot guarantee. Bring Me the person you cannot fix. Bring Me the future you cannot see.
Bring Me every single what if.
And then Paul says that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Peace is not the prerequisite; peace is the fruit.
And fruit takes time to grow. You do not stand over a newly planted vine demanding grapes. Actually, the vineyards we visit and research take decades to produce grapes that produce good wine.
They require tending, watering, and pruning. Most importantly, they require light.
And then you have to wait and endure.
The Spirit cultivates peace in us much the same way - not by shaming us for every anxious thought, but by teaching us, over and over again, where to take it.
What can I do?
Do that. Say xyz, implement abc.
What if?
Give that to part to Me.
And suddenly Sinatra is singing again.
My Way.
That is likely why this song has found me each time I get away for a short bit: out of my life where I feel a large responsibility to control the ending and to the water that has no clear boundaries. No edges. It’s free to move about.
And each time, there is this woman singing a song about a life fully lived: a life chosen, owned, and looking back without apology saying:
I was here.
I loved.
I lost.
I laughed.
I cried.
I took the blows.
I stood back up.
I lived this life.
I find that incredibly beautiful. I don’t believe Christianity asks us to disappear from our own lives. They were given to us to navigate.
Surrender is not passivity. Trusting God does not mean refusing to act. Faith does not mean shrugging our shoulders at the vineyard and saying, “Well, God is in control.”
The vineyard still needs tending.
(I feel like yelling that sometimes.)
There is work entrusted to us, and there are people entrusted to us. That’s the most important work.
There are phone calls that need to be made and questions that need to be asked. There are doors worth knocking on. There are things love requires of us.
God gave us minds and wills and gifts and voices and choices, and I don’t believe He is glorified when we refuse to use them. But He is also glorified when we possess the freedom to use our voice and deliberately choose restraint because love asks something greater of us than being understood. The lesson isn’t that having my way is wrong. The lesson is learning my way has to be rooted in His way.
I can plant and prune. I can advocate, and I can still debate; those skills were developed and pruned early in life for a time such as this. I can research and educate. I can tend the vineyard faithfully.
But I cannot make the grapes grow because I am the tenant and not the Owner. And there is an enormous freedom in finally remembering the difference.
Maybe someday, when I look backward over my own life, I will be able to say that I really did live it.
That I chose boldly and loved fiercely.
That I took some blows and I cried plenty.
That I fought for people entrusted to me, and I used my voice when it needed to be used.
That I kept things private when they needed to remain that way. I accepted being misunderstood as a sacrifice.
That I knocked on doors.
That I made mistakes and changed course and tried again.
That I did everything love asked me to do.
The greatest grace will be knowing that somewhere along the way, I learned that I did not have to control the ending.
I learned to ask, What can I do? And do it. I learned to recognize the what ifs? And hand them over.
I learned that peace is not proof that I never worried. It is fruit the Spirit patiently grew in me as I learned, again and again, to surrender what was never mine to carry.
As I hear “My Way” I am hearing something different in it now. Not defiance or self-sufficiency - something much more tender: that we’re fully present for our lives. I am living the life God has actually given me with courage and agency and love: doing everything that is mine to do, leaving untouched what love asks me not to touch, and trusting Him with the parts I cannot control.
My way becoming, little by little, His.
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