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
