Surrendering to the Call

Life’s experiences come at you whether you think you can control them or not.  They come at you sometimes in attack and sometimes in exuberant joy.  Sometimes, life experiences knock you on your back and other times they have you swinging around for joy or swinging around in anxiety, anticipating that you will be flung into a wall and broken into pieces, far too many pieces to ever hope of putting back together again.

Surrendering is letting go of the belief that I can control what life tosses my way.  Surrendering is letting go of the belief that I can manage what life throws at me.  Sometimes, no amount of reasoning, communication, or understanding changes anything I experience.  Surrendering means letting go of managing all that is around me.  In letting go of managing, I let go of the excess of that which is not mine to tend to and thus, that which is not me; that which does not resonate with my authenticity.

Surrendering is accepting.  Acceptance is the realization that I can choose to be deeply wounded by the experiences of life or I can choose to recognize that obstacles causing permanent damage can be removed, buffered, or rendered non-existent.  That which causes pain can be let go.  That which distracts me from my authentic expression of joy, love, and peace can be let go. 

Nothing in life is controllable.  Acceptance of that is not passive; it involves a deep awareness of what I know and what I don’t know, what I feel and what I don’t feel, and what I see and what I don’t see.  Acceptance involves, as Mark Nepo describes, living away the excess so that the soul can return to its authenticity of love, joy, and peace.  Surrendering is accepting who I am and who I am not and being open to whom I am becoming.  However, do I hear the call to become authentic?  And if I hear it, will I surrender to that call?  Will I have the courage to face all that I am not to discover all that I am and am becoming?