Surrenduring

I have a very mixed audi­ence of friends, here, and so I am try­ing to do away with the jar­gon that I’m famil­iar with and explain this in more sim­plis­tic terms.

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to join a church.

For as long as I can remem­ber, I have had an absolute knowl­edge in the pres­ence of God. I was much closer to God when I was lit­tle, and my sen­si­tiv­ity to the super­nat­ural was more vivid — I could see and hear those extra shades of life around me. I knew what was there. I accepted that knowl­edge when I was a child. I accepted the inner peace and sal­va­tion that comes with God’s spirit when you invite Him into your life. I have never once doubted that presence.

Still, I have also always had sur­ren­der issues. When I was 12 I alerted my new babysit­ter that I had “prob­lems with author­ity fig­ures.” I was quite matter-of-fact about it, and sim­ply wanted to let her know so that she didn’t feel as if I was per­se­cut­ing her per­son­ally. Principles were involved. She was 17 and didn’t know how to han­dle this, but my par­ents got quite a kick out of the inci­dent, and it’s become my family’s slo­gan for my per­son­al­ity. I actively oppose oppres­sive gov­ern­ment, be it polit­i­cal, social or famil­ial. I haven’t opposed spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment, but I haven’t worked with it, either.

There’s a dif­fer­ence between accept­ing God into your life, and giv­ing your being over to God. I’ve done the for­mer: I have God’s spirit in my life and I’ve accepted the spir­i­tual for­give­ness that’s part of that whole pack­age. There’s an addi­tional step towards matu­rity that I have rebelled against — that will­ing­ness to fol­low, to love and to study God. There’s so much of a sur­ren­der wrapped up in that process, and I’ve never known how to really and truly give it. It’s not… nat­ural to me.

This has caused buck­ets of angst. I know who I can be, and I know that with­out that matu­rity I’ll never make it there. I need to take that peace that I already pos­sess and start liv­ing within it. I’ve spent nine years oppos­ing that peace, deter­mined that I pre­ferred the anx­i­ety, the chaos and the anger. I’ve really just been scared to fig­ure out how on earth I can move forward.

So, now I’m out on my own and I’ve been avoid­ing it as much as ever. Adulthood involves deter­min­ing which forms of sur­ren­der are in fact lib­er­at­ing. This is one of them.