A HOPEFUL HEART ◽ YOU
The Day After
By Christina Oberon
photo courtesy of Doug Gephardt
I was talking with a friend recently about surrender, and she explained that she had reached a point where she felt like she had done everything she knew to do. She had weighed the options, made decisions, prayed about them and finally told God, "I give this to you." But then came the next day.
The questions came back. So did the second-guessing. Maybe she should have done this differently. Maybe she should have kept trying that. Maybe letting go had been the wrong decision after all. Isn't that so much of what surrender actually looks like?
We talk about surrender as though it's a moment. We give something to God, release our grip and trust Him with whatever comes next. Except sometimes we wake up the next morning and want it back. I know I have.
I've prayed about something and then spent the next few days trying to solve it myself. I've told God I trusted Him and then wondered whether I had made the wrong decision. Over the years, I've learned that surrender isn't something we do once. Sometimes we have to do it every day. And sometimes several times before lunch.
I used to think surrender meant getting to a place where I was completely at peace with whatever happened. No more questioning, fear, or trying to figure out the ending. Life has taught me otherwise.
Some of the things I've had to surrender were also the things I wanted the very most. Infertility taught me that. Grief has taught me that. So have the seasons when I've prayed for an answer and didn't know when or how or if it would come. Those experiences didn't make me stop hoping. They changed what hope meant to me.
Surrender isn't the same thing as giving up. It doesn't mean we stop praying for what we want, seeking answers, accepting help or taking the next step available to us. And it doesn't mean we have to convince ourselves we won't be disappointed if things don't turn out as we hoped. I think surrender is much simpler, and much harder. It's recognizing where our part ends.
There are decisions we can make, doors we can knock on, treatments we can try and prayers we can pray. And then there is the part we cannot control. That's usually the part I want back. I want to know how the story ends before I agree to the middle. But faith doesn't always give us that certainty.
I think that's where surrender and hope meet. Hope doesn't require us to know the outcome, and surrender doesn't require us to stop wanting one.
Proverbs 3:5 tells us,
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."
This was the verse my childhood pastor gave me during my years of infertility. I've read it countless times, but I think I focused more on the trusting than the second part. "Lean not on your own understanding." That's a hard one for someone like me who wants to understand why something is happening and how it's going to work out. Sometimes I want the explanation almost as much as the answer. But some seasons don't give us that yet. They give us today. And today may ask us to loosen our grip again.
So if you gave something to God yesterday and woke up worrying about it again today, give it back to Him. Tell Him you're scared, what you're still hoping for, and when you don't understand. If you find yourself carrying it again tomorrow, you can do the same thing then.
Maybe surrender isn't one great act of faith but a thousand small ones. We may not always get the answers we want or understand what God is doing, but we can keep choosing to trust Him with what we don't know. The day after surrender sometimes means waking up and choosing to surrender again.