Surrender.

The more I know Jesus, the more I know surrender.

I often ask myself what I would answer and what I would speak of if my church asked me to stand and gift what the Lord is doing in my life and what he has been teaching me. I have mulled over and wrestled and wondered. I listen in, lean in, and absorb those who share which such raw honesty and genuine humility, that it causes me to dig into the roots of where the Lord has met me the last few years and unearth all that he has given me, through the planting, the pruning, the harvesting of my years since life 'on my own' began.

He has taught me surrender. He has taught me open hands, open life, open roads, open wounds, open pages, open gifts, open words. Open of everything and all that I am. Surrender.

Surrender of my hopes, of my dreams, of all that I am. Surrender of the things of myself, the things that make me, me. The things I thought I could be, the things I think I am, the things I throw myself to be. The surrender of all that is good, of all that is real, of all I hold dear. The surrender of everything until I feel like the sackclothed woman begging at his feet with a murmur asking for even the crumbs from his table that are given to dogs. I have met him there, at the table, at the crucifix of his feet, just staring up with tears asking for any small crumb as a reminder of his goodness. I have been there, in his arms, feeling the warmth of all that is good and embracing myself like a child in his arms, surrendered to him. I have been there, enhanced in the full glow and sunshine of surrendering to the dance of bright rays sprawling through wide-open, flower splotched fields of light.

Surrender is not easy, nor has come easy. It has come through the hurt, the crushing spirit, the millions of times I have tried and failed. It has come through the striving, the wishing, the pushing.... the endless pursuit. It has come through the plans I've made and never saw rejoiced in, the promises I clung to but see dashed otherwise, the very clearly composed 'dark night of the soul' that took years for my heart to repair from... and still learn today to walk out of fully. Surrender has come through the final offering of my hands, empty and open, knowing I have nothing left, but to surrender.

And I still live surrendered. Surrendered of my hopes and dreams. I leave my road map and travel plans in his hands, and I wait. I wait to see if any of those desire, now hidden deep within me, will ever come to fruition again, someday. And I wait and wonder, wondering if he'll just break it all open some day, like a flood dam of pure joy embellishing all my ever-expected dreams to so much brighter and beautiful than I can ever imagine. And I wait and hold fast, preparing and releasing myself and my life into the known desert that may always be the path I walk. Because either way, in any of these instances and scenarios, I must and will live, surrendered.