When “life warriors” surrender

Photo source: Unsplash (Pixabay)

I have learned that life will keep bringing you the same set of experiences until you learn what you needed to learn.

This phase of my life, I guess, is about surrender. How did I know? I got another rejection letter.

This is the only time in my life when answers were always NO. I could no longer understand why. My previous plans have failed. Then I crafted a life direction for myself, a new vision of what I want my life to be like. And guess what? Almost every step forward is impeded by another rejection or failure.

For someone who survived by taking charge of things, this is a horrible state to be in. If everything is beyond my control, what else am I left to do?

After reading my latest, beautifully written rejection letter, I opened my journal and poured out my frustration on several pages.

When I was done, I took out Melody Beattie‘s Beyond Codependency. And I reached the chapter on surrender. Its title was: “Letting the Good Stuff Happen.” This quote in particular stuck with me.

“Surrendering and letting go are about willingness and trust. They’re about having enough faith to want something so much that we can taste it; then deliberately letting go of our desires and trusting our Higher Power to do for us what He wants, when He wants. They’re about believing in God and His love for us even when it hurts.”

~ Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency

The rest of the chapter acknowledges how difficult it is to surrender and let go of something we want so bad and we know we deserve. It’s hard, it’s scary, it’s sad. I should know. And I had a good cry as I went through my hopes in my mind, and acknowledged the reality that they may NOT happen.

I also began entertaining the idea that if these don’t happen, then perhaps other good things would. It’s been this way all my life, I realized. I wasn’t given everything I asked for, but I ended up getting something just as good, or even better. As Ralph Waldo Emerson had put, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

Beattie pointed out that we do not have to learn to surrender everything all at once. We can begin only with what we are ready to let go of.

May we learn to give our best, and still be able to let go. May we keep showing up. May we be okay, whether our dreams come true or not.