Surrender – Ugh!

For probably a good portion of the past six months, I have been been praying a lot about surrender. While I would expect that it would be really difficult for me to surrender my future, the most difficult prayer for me has actually been, “Lord, I surrender to where you have me in my life right now.” As uncertain as the future is, it is sometimes the present moment that feels the most rocky.

The problem with this prayer is that I constantly feel like I’m failing. I can never surrender enough. I am never done surrendering. And if for a split second, I think I’m a really awesome surrenderer, the Lord quickly shows me another way that I have yet to surrender my life to Him. Sometimes it just gets discouraging. I think at some point I started to think about surrender as this dirty word that I just didn’t want to hear. So a few weeks ago, I decided to stop thinking about surrender so much. One day when I was praying, the word “acceptance” popped into my mind. For the first time in a while, I felt like I could actually breathe a sigh of relief. Acceptance. Acceptance for me is much more realistic at this point. It is much more attainable. I can accept where the Lord has me in my life right now, even in the days when I don’t feel all holy and full of surrender.

So this is where I am at. Instead of thinking about this big, ambiguous, “surrender” word, I am thinking about “acceptance”. Acceptance is not as overwhelming for me. It doesn’t make me fear that the Lord is going to turn my life upside down and inside out (trust me, He’s already done that multiple times). But it does require that I follow the Lord without kicking and screaming the whole way. Acceptance requires that I go with Him, without digging my heels into the ground to try to hold on to my own plans.

So pray for me as I try to accept everything the Lord is doing, instead of being discouraged by my lack of surrender.