The Power of Surrender

It sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? The power of surrender. Surrender is giving up, waving the white flag, admitting defeat. In short, surrender is usually thought of as weakness. In some areas this is certainly true. For my life of faith though, I disagree. I believe, in the hands of a Christian, surrender is actually one of our most powerful weapons.

Surrender is the way to peace. Surrender is the way to freedom. Surrender, my dear friends, is the only way to live without losing your EVER LOVING MIND this side of heaven.

Surrender — real true down in your soul surrender, is also ridiculously hard.

When life begins spinning out of control and things aren’t going the way I have planned I sense this immediate reflex to desperately manage and arrange for some kind of control. Do you feel this in your own life? It’s the desperation that always clues me in. I tend to feel frantic to just make something work. Control becomes the drug of choice. The problem with control is this; it’s an illusion.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. You really DO control what food you put in your body, whether you use your cell phone while driving and if you’ll stop for Starbucks AGAIN this week. I will give you those things. What I’m talking about are the BIG things in your life…..

Try to get pregnant for years with no luck.

Wake up to find your child, friend, spouse or sibling has died in their sleep for no known reason.

Lose your job without warning and for no fault of your own.

Be the model pregnant mom and give birth to a child with debilitating birth defects.

Have a spouse walk away from a marriage you are willing to save.

Watch your home burn to the ground from a freak accident.

Face an MS diagnosis with little kids to raise and a life ahead of you.

I don’t really need to go on, do I? We personally know someone from all of these categories and have experienced some ourselves. When it comes to the game changing moments, the ones that twist the plot of our lives in an instant, we really don’t have nearly as much control as we would like to believe.

Well, crap. That’s depressing.

So now what?

Enter from stage left — your choice. I’ll even let you call it control if it makes you feel better.

Will we choose to surrender? And what the heck does that even mean?

Gather round friends, and I will tell you a story (or two). :)

Several years ago I had one of those beautiful moments when I KNEW that God had spoken to me. He told me that we were going to move to Colorado Springs. It was crazy and made little sense but I knew that I knew that I knew what I had heard. My husband, however, thought I had completely lost my mind. He was not on board and the whole thing was instantly shelved…..for a couple years.

What do you do with that? The urge to nag, question and be persuasive was instantly there. Thankfully I have wiser people than I in my life and the simple, yet beautiful advice was this — surrender. Lay the whole ridiculously amazing dream down at the feet of Jesus and trust that He is far more persuasive than you are. And so I did. Over and over and over again. Over and over back on my knees, opening my hands and telling the Lord, “I surrender. You can have it all. It’s not mine to hold and I place it back in Your hands. YOU are in control and I yield to You.”

Some days were easy and others were hard but the fruit was BEAUTIFUL. The fruit of the surrender was peace. Peace in my marriage. Peace in my soul. Freedom comes from peace like that — I can tell you first hand.

Guess where we live now? My soul is at rest in the mountains of Colorado and my marriage is beautifully intact. All because of surrender and our most amazing God.

Please hear me — I’m not suggesting that all you have to do to get what you want is “surrender” and suddenly you’ve pleased God enough that He’ll grant your every wish. That, my dear friends, is not the promise. Sometimes it does mean we get what we want in our circumstances. Other times, not so much. What it does mean is we ALWAYS we get more of Him.

We have 3, soon to be 4, children. They are the light (and exhaustion) of our lives. However, our second child was born very sick. Surgeries, weeks and weeks in ICU settings, tube feedings and watching her struggle on a ventilator were our daily lives. It was hell and I did not handle it well.

I could not handle the fact that God had not healed her. We had asked Him with great faith, prayed with others and she was born worse than doctors had predicted. It haunted my thoughts, my prayers and led to everything BUT surrender. And somewhere, in the gross mishandling of my pain, I decided that it was up to me to bring about her supernatural healing. Twisted, right? As if I’m powerful enough ON MY OWN to pray her into wholeness???? Control doesn’t have to make sense to feel good for the short term.

I spiraled downhill pretty quickly from there, shutting God out of my heart with a ‘thank you very much but I’ll handle this from here’ attitude. She was about 8 months old when the whole bottom fell out. She was having some setbacks, she was not following the “protocol” for her condition and I was exhausted. Trying to be God will do that to you.

Laying in bed one night, my husband was praying but I had no more prayers left. I remember whispering to God in the dark, tears streaming down my face, “I just want to know if You love me.” I rolled over and went to sleep not expecting any answer.

The next day I was driving our oldest to preschool when God just showed up. I struggled to keep my car on the road as the fullness of God’s goodness just invaded my car. I can’t really explain it to you other than I felt like Moses in front of the burning bush. I could hardly see the road through my tears and I was completely overwhelmed by the tangible feeling of God’s love and goodness in my sour milk smelling mom car.

Surrender was finally easy in that moment. In the light of His goodness I willingly and joyfully and without even thinking surrendered EVERYTHING. I surrendered the life of our child to His capable hands, I surrendered our other child, our future children, my marriage…..EVERYTHING. I told Him He could have whatever He chose to take because I finally understood just how easy an exchange it is when I got Him in return.

It was life changing.

It may also sound a little whack. I’ve learned following Jesus always has a bit of crazy in it. I like it that way. :)

That time? No healing. I didn’t get “what I wanted.” What I got was what I needed. My faith was nearly shipwrecked and I had completely lost my way. I was one surgery from walking away from God all together.

But in His kindness and goodness and mercy, He showed me a glimpse of Himself and made surrender the easiest decision in the world. And I will never be the same.

Sometimes surrender is our conscious act of laying down our own will, over and over again until our emotions catch up. Other times, He swoops in with such kindness and love that it feels more like falling in love than sacrificing our desires. He uses both. That is GOOD NEWS, people.

The “big” surrenders are important and make for great stories. The “little” surrenders are what shape our character and our ability to love well. We need them all.

One caveat as I close. Surrender is not…..

• giving up when God has called you to pray and fight for something. I still pray almost daily for our daughter’s miraculous and total healing. I’ve seen God heal people and won’t quit asking. I have quit striving and obsessing and generally freaking out about where she is and is not, medically.
• claiming a defeatist attitude that says, “Nothing is in my control anyway, so why pray or try or ________”. Surrender is aligning ourselves properly under the authority of Jesus, not abdicating our own responsibility.
• abandoning every dream you have in some legalistic effort to get things right or earn God’s favor. He’s good. REALLY, really good and many of those dreams you have were put there by Him. Trust His heart enough to know that He will handle you and all you bring to Him very well.
• always the answer….but it’s usually the first place I start when I feel the frantic grip of control creep into my heart.

The most beautiful part of all is this. Jesus was no stranger to surrender.

“And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.’ Now an angel appeared to Him, strengthening Him.” Luke 22:41–43

I can think of no more difficult surrender with an outcome so astonishingly beautiful.

Take courage, brave ones, you can do this.

And if you need any encouragement you can find me hiding behind our couch every nap time surrendering life’s latest plot twist to the Great Storyteller.