Surrender. Give it up to God. Sometimes letting go feels so freaking passive in today’s usual mindset. Striving, getting shit done, making stuff happen, creating our realities, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and a gazillion other platitudes, compel us to take action and muscle our way into creating the lives we want to experience while taking on the injustices we see in our immediate space or the greater community.
In a place of angst or desperation for things to change or shift, surrender sounds like giving up. It’s usually the last thing I want to hear when I feel my back is against the wall. Really? Just let go and let God? Yes, in theory. No, in this moment. If I let down my vigilance, what will happen? Everything will fall apart, and I will backslide down the mountain with 50 pounds of junk on my back.
And how the heck do we reconcile surrender with taking action? Isn’t it true that you can’t expect the world to come to you? You must take action to create the things you want in life, right? You can’t just wish them into existence, sitting in a lotus position while taking deep cleansing breaths.
Yes, yes, and yes. With my birthday comes the thoughts of where I was last year at this time, how much I wanted certain things to change, and all that I was doing to make it happen. I was confident that my intentions, mindset, and action plan were all in place to ensure the outcome I wanted. In retrospect, this was true. What I did not know at the time was how long it would take for everything to come to fruition.
The space between taking action toward a goal and experiencing the results of your efforts can feel excruciating, like feeling around in the dark and walking a path that only reveals the next step. You look around, and nothing seems to be changing. You are taking action like crazy, thinking good thoughts, praying, affirming, thanking, and taking more action; nothing changes. I remember more than once bursting into tears at the futility of it all. It seemed that no matter what I did, nothing was happening.
What does this mean? Is it a sign? What am I supposed to do? Just tell me what to do, and I will do it. Doing something - anything - is what most of us reach for in these situations. It’s why people make food for people who are sick or just went through trauma or why we do so many other things to fill the space of feeling powerless. Because in the urgency to will our plans into existence or fight the inevitable, we sense how little control we truly have over anything, and it’s terrifying if you allow yourself to pull back the corner of that thought.
It’s at this point that my will reaches a breaking point. And I feel what it means to surrender. For me, it feels a lot like playing in the surf. I venture out into the sea, wanting to feel the raw intensity and beauty that is the ocean, the cleansing flow of salt water all around me. It’s exhilarating until you realize how small and powerless you are in the face of the waves and currents around you. Waves come up that are more than you bargained for. This isn’t a manageable, curated experience. It is nature. It is life.
I draw on this experience and the memory of shifting from feeling in control of my time in the surf to understanding the best way to navigate the waves and not be crushed by them is to surrender control and personal will. Allowing, moving with, and making adjustments is much easier and makes room for the magnificence without so much terror or smackdowns. Standing rigid in the surf, fighting with the crashing waves, is a losing game.
We hold our ground enough not to be swept out to sea. We chart our course sufficiently to be mindful of the shoreline and monitor our depths, making adjustments as needed. But we stop at needing it to be the specific experience we envisioned. The waves have a general pattern and a definite unpredictability. In my experience, the only way to truly enjoy the magnificence of the shoreline is to surrender to its nature. Surrender to What Is instead of What I Think It Should Be. And such is life.
Surrender is about doing what we can to keep our footing and chart our course while allowing the greater energies around us to do what they do. We look for signals of how we need to adjust or change tactics while we release control of the bigger story and how it is supposed to unfold.
If only for a moment or two, this is a tremendous release. I see that I don’t have to have it all figured out. I don’t know what is best for me and all that my life impacts. I don’t know where I truly fit into the grand scheme. And so it is.
What a relief that I don’t have to have it all figured out and that the story is not up to me. I can play my role as best I know how and make adjustments when it starts to feel like fighting the waves around me, which can easily result in drowning or at least a mouth and ears full of salt water.
Ironically, it’s in those moments of surrender that something shifts. Releasing “what should be” somehow makes room for something to change. It makes no sense in one respect, but it gets me closer to peace and the results I hope to experience more often than not.
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This is really good. While most people say “let it go” as a bumper-sticker platitude, you are speaking truth about what the process is, and how it can help.