when a usercontrol gets covered by a div, bad things happen

I have a userControl in my asp.net page.   This userControl has its own javascript routines. 
One feature I have is that the user can click a button that expands a DIV over his entire page, so it of course obscures the usercontrol.  When he shrinks the Div back to its normal size though, I find that the userControl is refreshed.  I know this, because the $(document).ready routine fires for the user-control.   I don't want this to happen.  I want the usercontrol to be in the same state it was in before the Div expanded. 
Some explanation: $(document).ready is "jquery" - its equivalent to javascript "onload"
Also, the expanded div is normally hidden, but I use jquery's SHOW method to show it, and since it has a high z-index, (and I fill it with text and change the dimensions), it covers whatever was on the page.
I can probably find a work-around for all this, but I'm ...