Surrender Dorothy

Life comes from God's spirit, and that's outside our control. Living in God's kingdom means getting blown about by his spirit. You never know what direction that wind will come from next. It's totally unpredictable. Its power comes from something we can't even see. An invisible force fuels the new life I'm talking about. You can't hope to corner it or fence it in. You simply surrender to it. - Virginia Stem Owens, Looking for Jesus

If you left my life up to me, I'd spend the day wandering the mall with a bag of peanut M&Ms in one hand, and a credit card in the other. That's my illness's vision of a great life for me. Never mind the debt it would create, never mind the poundage, never mind the dawn-of-the-dead state of consciousness. It's a handy way to drown out bad news, including consequences for behavior. That, my friends, is complete control.

And it doesn't work, so daily, I practice surrender. I awaken and simply say Uncle. You are going to have to help me find some other use for this day. I'm going to have to give it to you. I don't like it, I'll probably never want to, and half the time, I don't mean it. But it is my daily practice to keep letting go of the controls and handing them over. I have to stop and listen for directions. I have to do things I *gulp* don't feel like doing.

So instead of reading my book [better: buying new books!] I do the laundry as I promised my husband. I am scared to call up my dad and not know what to say. When you ask what's new there's not much - watching TV with my mom in between fixing meals for her and taking her to the toilet. And I call. (Once I made myself call and was feeling all virtuous about it, and he cut the call short to watch his TV program. God laughed. She thought that was a good one.) I do the things that are normal and healthy and not at all what I feel like doing, but it keeps me out of chaos enough to deal with the bigger stuff.

And no guaranteed answers on the bigger stuff, either. Should I marry this person? Should I take that job? Should I take a group to the Holy Land, as I am about to do in little more than a month, even with only a sort-of peace, dribbled over with home made rockets and jet retaliation? "I don't know," Jesus says, in that annoying way he has. You've got as much information as I do. I'm not going to tell you in the comfort of your lawn chair. You do your best, and the results are up to God. "Life comes from God's spirit", Virginia Stem Owens says in her wonderful paraphrase of Jesus to Nicodemus. You have to take a few risks. You can't get the test answers in advance. Admit it. Surrender. Enjoy.