There’s freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won’t be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you’ve reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you’re still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It’s exhausting, crazy-making.

Lamott, Anne (2012-11-13). Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (p. 14). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

Have you ever just had to lay your burdens down? I mean I know it sounds dramatic but there is something so freeing in the surrender. Something about the Be still and know that I am God, process of life. (Psalm 46:10). When you just kind of look up at the sky and say,

“I can’t figure this one out, you’ll have to kick in some help here. I know You know, and I know You’ve been waiting for me to give up, so I’m crying uncle.” 

I wish I could tell you that magically it happens in an instant and a remedy comes but it doesn’t usually work out that way for me. Sometimes it seems as if I’ve taken a number and I’m waiting at the DMV of heaven for one of the clerks to make sure my paperwork is correct just to send me to wait in the next line. Slowly but surely the answers come. Not always in the form I would like but  here is where it gets tricky, I have begun to trust it’s the form that is intended. Even when I don’t like it. Even when I don’t understand it. Even when it makes me mad.

I talked to someone recently who said she can’t come to church because she’s mad at God for making her go through some things she doesn’t feel are fair. I smiled and said nothing. Maybe I should have been God’s defender but I figure God is dealing with her just as he is dealing with me and maybe she has to walk it out just as I do. Sometimes despite what people say, your testimony just sounds like a political speech. I simply pray for her for the most part. Other times, I go through scenarios of what I could have said. “Why are you special?” “Oh, so it’s okay for others to go through this but not you?” Only that isn’t effective is it?

I wish I could tell you that I’ve mastered the secret of surrender and I have 5 easy steps for you to follow. I don’t. I know I do roll over and show my belly a lot easier than I used to. Maybe it’s age, or maybe I might have learned a thing or two. I do know this: Worrying gives me a headache and doesn’t make the answer come faster. Instead laying it down, clearing my agenda, and waiting as patiently as I can seems to be working.