My issue was that the control was big enough for many lines of text but only contained one, and did NOT have multiple lines enabled in the control properties.
When it erased, it only erased the area occupied by the text, not the entire control.
the solution for me was to resize the control so that it just contained the text. that fixed it for me.
basically, if you do not have multiple lines enabled in properties, then do not size the control bigger than it needs to be.