It’s 10 days before Christmas. I look at my beautiful tree, the Christmas village and other decorations I put up with so much love and excitement, and I just want to sit down and enjoy it all. I want to ‘give up’ or ‘surrender’ the pressure of getting the end-of-year work done, accompanied by planning for next year.
I also want to ‘surrender’ shopping for groceries and gifts, but even though I heavily depend on online retailers and their delivery people, I still have to do it. 😉
Because ‘surrender’ is not about avoiding stuff that needs to be done; it’s about surrendering control over the outcome of each thing we do. (It’s ok if I don’t get the ‘right’ gift… 🙂
This week, I’ve been talking a lot about surrender with my friend Dr. Ray Hellmann (who hosted a wonderful living room concert last Sunday.) Dr. Ray is an addiction specialist who, after decades of working with addicts, says that surrender (to God/ Higher Power) is crucial in the recovery process.
And yet, he says, “We can’t prescribe or teach ‘surrender.’
It’s a matter of Grace – those moments in which a place deep within us gets touched and we feel connected to God. Those moments of Grace help us to trust completely and remember that we don’t ever have to rely on our ‘own’ strength, but that the much bigger forces of life and love sustain us. In those moments, we surrender.
We still must do the daily work – but we can handle
the pressure and stress of it much better 🙂
I ponder:
Even though all of us can reasonably recognize different contexts of surrender, I think our minds are still resistant to surrender because we have learned that ‘surrender’ is a bad thing. For example, I watched a lot of WWII movies in which death was always better than ‘surrender.’
So there is always a part of me that is hesitant about to whom I’m surrendering my power… Which is good, of course, because I certainly don’t want to surrender to the wrong power (and unfortunately, I have done that in my past.) But this resistance can get in the way – especially when we don’t spend enough time connecting with God/ Source of Life and Love, and we don’t cultivate the awareness of God’s presence in our lives.
My conclusion: we must spend time in meditation/ contemplation/ stillness and learn to connect.
Now, AS A SPECIAL GIFT, I’m sharing a Chapter on Surrender with you. Click here to listen to the audio reflection and here to read the chapter.
Let me know what you think!
And if you’d like to listen to the other 24 Gifts, it’s still not too late to order! You can order my book “25 Gifts for Christmas” or just order the daily audio reflections.
CONNECT WITH ME