The Process Of Surrendering…

I tend to believe that life is a process of surrendering through one trial and tribulation after another. It’s a spiritual journey that ultimately comes down to letting go and letting God (or whatever one’s Higher Power is) take over, when they realize their ego and self-will just isn’t enough to handle it anymore.

The reality is that all of us have an innate desire to handle whatever gets thrown our way in life, solely on our own at first. But even for the strongest among us, things always seem to arise that totally brings us to our knees out of sheer helplessness. Like my friend who I know could be dropped off in the wilderness, completely naked, and totally survive off of his nature skills. Yet, when it came to alcohol and drugs, he discovered his ego and self-will just couldn’t cut it in handling either. It eventually took him surrendering to something much Greater to do it and it was that Power that helped him finally achieve sobriety with both.

Like this friend, quitting alcohol and drugs was the very first thing in life I found the need to surrender to God because my ego and self-will never was able to figure out how to do it. Shortly thereafter, stepping out of the closest and identifying myself as a gay male was the second thing I found the need to surrender to God. As the years progressed from that point forward, I began to see that much of life was simply a mere series of surrendering’s of my ego and self-will over to the care of God with things like toxic relationships, my father’s suicide, my mother’s alcoholism and untimely death, my childhood molester, the 12 Step work, a deteriorating business I owned that I had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into, and a number of other addictions as well.

With each of these trials and tribulations I faced, I did my very best to handle all on my own at first, which always caused me to eventually come face to face with a total meltdown in life. Thankfully though, it was the pain of those meltdowns that always brought me to my knees where prayer and tears led me to surrender the situation to God for help. And trust me, it was always worth it because in the end, due to that process of surrendering to God, I always found healing. I always found forgiveness. And I always found peace. None of which EVER came by running on ego and self-will.

In the past few years, I’ve been going through the hardest process I’ve had to face in life thus far when it comes to surrendering something over to God and that’s with my health. I have tried everything to improve this on my own ranging from doctors and holistic practitioners, to medicine and holistic healings. You name it and I’ve most likely tried it already, but sadly, with little to no noticeable relief. Time and time again this has led me to fall to my knees and cry out to God for help in the realization that it’s obviously out of my control and not meant to be handled on my own. And it’s been through this specific process of surrendering that I realized there is a key to everything I’ve ever surrendered to God throughout life and that’s finding acceptance first.

I am convinced that for one to surrender their ego and self-will to a Higher Power when it deals with any painful thing of life, it always comes down to acceptance that one can’t do it on their own anymore, and that is where I’m at today with my health issues, accepting that they are meant to be there for now, as frustrating as that is. And through that acceptance, I continue to surrender each and every physically painful moment of my day over to God, asking for the strength and courage to keep going and to keep trusting that He can and will handle it far better than I can.

The bottom line is that the process of surrendering is never easy. So many of us have built up our ego’s and self-will’s so strongly that it ends up taking very painful trials and tribulations to ever break them down. But trust me when I say that you don’t have to surrender to anything if you don’t want to. You don’t have to turn your will and your life over to anything either, if you don’t want to. You can keep right on going on in your life living in pain, being angry, being negative, and blaming the world for how your feel inside. OR, you can do what I continue to do, that being to surrender whatever it is that is causing you such distress to the care of God or whatever your Higher Power is, as then and only then, do I believe the healing can truly begin…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Question To Ponder For The Day

How about a fun hypothetical question for today? So here goes…you wake up one morning and suddenly you are back in the body of your 9-year-old self, but you remember the entire life you’ve lived thus far. Would you do anything differently if you had to live your life over again from that point forward or would you do everything exactly as you once did?

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday! While I do my best to live a life of gratitude, I also choose to start each of my week’s now in this blog by focusing on one thing I’m truly grateful for, which for today, is going to be my 12 Step recovery work from a life of addiction.

I used to think that the only thing that was important when it came to addiction was to remain clean and sober from the substance of the addiction itself and if I did, everything else would work itself out in my life. So, I spent a very long time doing just that, except I did nothing about all those unsettled insides of me. Eventually, I became so broken because of it and turned into nothing more than a dry addict. I remained just as sick as when I had engaged in each of the addictions themselves and that’s because I didn’t realize that the disease of addiction wasn’t so much about the substance of the addiction itself, as it was about healing what was going on underneath it all within me. Thank God I finally learned that when I accepted I couldn’t do this on my own anymore and opted to fully enter a life of 12 Step recovery.

Ever since, I have found so much more stability in life, as it’s the steps that led me to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. And through the process of turning my will and life over to the care of God, I was able to get honest with myself and start to find forgiveness in my heart for all the resentments I had carried for years. And through the process of finding forgiveness in my heart for all those resentments I had carried for years, I began to see vast numbers of character defects that had hurt both myself and plenty of others along the way. And through the process of beginning to see all those character defects that hurt both myself and plenty of others along the way, I found a desire to make amends and restitution. And through the process of making each of those amends and restitution, I started to develop a life of humility. And through the process of developing a life of humility, I learned that prayer and meditation and a number of other spiritual practices were going to be necessary to remain this way. And through the process of doing daily prayer and meditation and a number of other spiritual practices, I found a desire living within me to help others. And finally, through the process of helping others, I began to practice the 12 Steps of recovery in every facet of my life, which helped me to wake up one day and realized just how much more stable my life had become than before I ever began my 12 Step recovery work.

This is why I’m truly grateful for my 12 Step recovery work, because if it wasn’t for it, I’d still be a complete toxic mess, causing more chaos and disruption in this world, than doing my best as I do now, to create a little peace and joy in life for both myself and all others. But even more importantly, it’s because of my 12 Step recovery work that I not only have a much more unconditionally loving and forgiving heart today, but also a grateful one as well, one that is the very reason why I started Grateful Heart Monday’s in the first place! 🙂

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson