setting a usercontrol property as another control

if i wanted to expose a property on a usercontrol that basically would
work like the way the validators work with the ControlToValida te
property, whats a reliable way of finding the correct control off of a
text property?

I was figuring i could expose a string, allow the consumer to set it,
and then use some technique in the usercontrol to get the reference to
the instance of the control, but i'm not having much luck with actually
finding the control from the parent page by a string that matches the
control ID of the target control.

it would be great if someone could help.. if i have to end up writing a
recursive FindControl method i will, but that makes me feel a little
sick inside.