I began to notice big changes this morning. I won't say I awoke with great joy because part of surrender meant that I had to give up. I had to give up trying to control my life and my future. That's a huge thing for me to do! I've been working so hard to try to find a job, for one thing. I've been trying everything possible to stay in Pittsburgh and have enough income to make it. Giving up meant facing the true consequences of not finding income. For me, that's moving to Oregon with the cats, into someone else's home. This would be very hard on the cats and me, plus on the person I'd move in with and her pets. I'm so very grateful to have a place to go, someone entirely willing to come and get me and take us all in. And in some ways I'd love to live with her. But it would be a huge displacement and therefore isn't what I want.
I want to say that giving up doesn't mean you quit trying. Our part is to do all we can, all the work before us. God's part is the outcome. You can put that in whatever terms you want - Creator, the universe - whatever is most comfortable for you. As I've said before, my belief is in God but I don't force that on you. However, it's my blog so of course I'll use the term that fits my beliefs. Anyway, my part is to continue applying for jobs, networking, doing all I can. The difference is, I'm no longer trying to make things happen. I'm simply doing my part so God and the universe can do the rest. Nothing will happen if we don't do our part. As Mike Dooley is fond of saying, do anything but be in motion. The universe won't move for an inert object but if you're moving forward, it can nudge you in the right direction.
I never truly understood surrender before. At the end of the 1980s when I was facing divorce, I went through a major upheaval of faith and belief. I was very smug on about 1988, thought I really understood God and the Bible, had a real handle on all this. Then began the dark years when I didn't know what I believed, realized I truly didn't have any of the answers. In the 80s and before, I truly studied the Bible, tried to learn all I could and truly know and understand God. So these days I have so many of the concepts down, and am finally coming to understand through truly living these things. One of those is surrender. It doesn't mean expecting God to fix everything or fulfill our every wish, or even supply our every need. It simply means doing our part - all of it that we can given human nature and limitations - and leaving the outcome to God. I trust that like begets like and that God is very good and loving. I know He doesn't punish us for our human failings. I've come to understand that fully finally, down to the bottom of my heart. I used to expect a God-sized shoe to fall on me whenever I made the slightest mistake, because that's how my mother handled me. She was the god of our house. She was the supreme ruler and I had no say in whatever happened to me. Now, consider how big it is for me to surrender trying to control my own life! I've come to understand that God wants to shower us with goodness, that abundance is the natural state of the universe. There's abundant air, water, grass, flowers, trees, animals... There may not be an abundance of all of that in all places but that's because of man and environment, not a limited universal supply. When you take the earth as a whole, you see abundance all around you - the earth as God created it. And God even wants us to have a lot of what our heart's desire, as long as no one else is harmed for you to get it.
So surrendering doesn't mean you quit trying or working. Surrendering means you yield the outcome. It means you accept with grace and gratitude whatever the outcome is, and find a way to deal with it if needed. I also understand that whether I realize it or not at the time, what I'm given in life is for my greatest good. I've learned so many lessons from adversity! And although it doesn't always seem like it at the time, it's been worth whatever it took to learn it. And when things just happen, God can use those too. Sometimes we don't see the good in any situation at once. Faith is knowing that you will eventually see, or learn from it, and that God can use anything to help us.
During the night and this morning my thoughts were of how to cope with the logistics of the move if it happens. These are not happy thoughts, but they're only natural at this point. I'm a planner, and if I'm to move I need to be prepared. I have decisions to make about what to keep, what to sell, what to store. I need to figure out how to best get the cats to our destination and what they'll need. I'll have a great deal of work to do and it will take intense planning. That's actually all my part of things - logistics. The outcome of the logistics is God's work. But mine is to use my brains and be as organized and prepared as possible rather than just expect God to do it all. So as I said, I didn't awaken with joy.
But as I started my day, I noticed a new freedom. I began to feel free of the burden of outcome. I noticed that I no longer felt burdened by trying to find a job. Since my part is simply to look for jobs and apply, not to get a job, I'm now free. Getting a job can be hard but simply identifying openings and applying is easy. I know I can easily do that - I have been. Now that I've surrendered the outcome, the burden is no longer on me. Now that I don't feel burdened, I've cleared my energy, and I'm much lighter. And as I began to experience the effects of that, I realized the true benefits of surrender. It hasn't all lifted overnight. This struggle has been going on for quite some time and it takes a little time for our full hearts and heads to entirely get the message. It takes a little time for full, heartfelt release. But now I have a good idea what it feels like and it's so worth giving up control.
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