Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. – Brennan Manning
Surrender – Part 1
(Today's artwork is supplied by my dear friend, Susanna April. She is a beautiful person and a wonderful letterist. Check her out at susannaapril.com).
The last couple of weeks, our house has been plagued by a pretty nasty flu. It was gross. While I was at the Doctors getting some antibiotics to help combat the evil sinusitis, he said something to me that’s been rolling around in my head: “This virus needs to be respected. People get themselves into all kinds of trouble by not respecting the sickness or their own bodies.”
Respect the illness?
And he was right. There came a point where I had to surrender to the fact that I was sick and that the illness needed time to work its way through me.
Did I not have faith that I would get well quickly?
Did I not believe that God could heal me?
That his name was higher than the title of my sickness?
At the same time, I needed to surrender to my own body. It was sick. If I kept pushing it like it was well, I possibly would have ended up in the hospital a lot sicker than I had been.
So I surrendered to the illness, the antibiotics, and my own body and slept. Stayed in bed. Work stayed undone and the house got messy and my calls went unanswered. But sometimes, that's what surrender looks like.
Surrender can be a confusing notion. For many of us, surrender to God has focused on resistance to other things. We resist to surrender, we surrender by resisting. Which is very dualistic and doesn't lend to the true meaning and function of surrender (more on that later).
Another word we use for surrender is submission, which carries all kinds of connotations. As a woman, I have to admit that when I hear this word a chill goes up my spine… it has been endlessly misused and misrepresented.
There’s an idea that to surrender and submit is like when you’re facing an enemy you know you can’t beat and you wave your white flag in desperate protest to the battle and in hope for mercy. It’s a form of relinquishing control, but one that leads to further bondage, rather than to freedom. Because we so often think of the world in terms of “for and against, us and them,” to surrender and submit has meant that we lose and someone else wins.
But this does not have to be the case.
To surrender and to submit is to understand that you don’t have control over some things. It means “to give over or yield to the power or authority of a higher entity; to be subject to some kind of treatment or influence.”
Life doesn’t have to be a fight, a struggle, a wrestle, or war.
When I surrendered to sinusitis I wasn’t giving up the idea that I would get well, I wasn’t avoiding faith or disbelieving the power of God to heal… But I was relinquishing control over something I couldn't control anyway. I did what I could – I got antibiotics, I took them, I slept, I prayed… which in of itself is a surrender.
When you think of submission and surrender, replace those thoughts of losing and being diminished, with the idea of love and hope.
Brennan Manning said, “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
Surrendering is not a form of losing. It’s not self-diminishing so someone can dominate you. It’s to understand that the Divine is for you, all around you, and with you. It’s ultimately a surrender to the idea that above all, you are loved. You cannot control everything, and that's OK. The one who holds you is in control of the most powerful force and essence of all.
Love.
When you radically define yourself as one loved by God, surrender becomes empowering and submission the way to freedom.
Go to Part 2 – To God
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