Living Into Surrender: The Call

The Call to Surrender: Day I

It’s a new school year, and as I transition back to work as a part-time school librarian, I find myself filled with resistance for so many reasons. As the door opens to a new school, I want to run the other way–but I can’t, mainly for financial reasons, like most of us.

With the desire to fly away, I am being asked to land.

What do I do? I had a tantrum, cried, and felt my deep longing to be spending more time writing, painting, and doing spiritual direction, but those things, which I love, do not generate enough income for me to sustain myself, my family, and my life.

As I took a long walk after work today, I noticed all the old tapes running in my head: the stories that tell me how I am not enough, and how I have failed, and that somehow I took a wrong turn. Then, by God’s grace, I stopped at a lookout, noticing the sunlight glistening on the ocean. In that moment, I felt how much I wanted to stay open to my life, rather than shut down with self criticism and doubt.

I could hear the call to surrender; recognized the dynamics and forces at work in me; remembered that I was co-creating my life with the Divine.

Dear God, I am not going to fill all the space in me and around me with the tension of self doubt and frustration. I will stay open, so that You can work in me and through me. I will trust that we are together in this journey, and that if I make room, you will direct me.

I have decided to live into surrender more consciously for 21 days, and share the journey with others, for the benefit of our own peace of mind, and the peace of those around us.

Today’s practice:

• Stop. Call on Divine love to meet you right where you are.