It is 4:15 a.m. and I can’t seem to find my friend called sleep.
My mind spins and turns and frantically but methodically tries to comprehend all that is unfolding in this season.
The house has a steady white noise of rhythmic breathing- theirs, not mine; mine is forced, theirs is a symphonic reminder of some of my most precious gifts.
I listen to the bathroom fan whirl in submission to the switch it must obey and slowly demand my own breathing to find a calm rhythm.
Surrender.
This space doesn’t seem fair, it smells of grief and loss and yet is somehow oddly clarifying.
The most important things seem to gleam and glow in this space, eager for the overdue acknowledgement of their splendiferous life giving fruit.
It is a pruning reality, and one where the branches that aren’t bearing life may be expertly cut away to create the conditions for new fruit to be born.
Surrender.
A distilled clarity of offerings that hold a fragrance of the finest perfume becomes a pouring out of what really matters in that space. A perfume submissively poured out at His feet, and one so strong that it will still linger through the breaking of bread, the garden midnights, the flagellations, the accusations, and the cross.
Surrender.
I pour out the perfume that has been refined in my soul over the last several months at His feet…
The baby girl who won’t be born this month,
The loss of people who were dear,
The pain of rejection,
The quilled blanket of isolation,
The mother who must undergo her cancer treatment alone,
The body that just will not heal,
The parenthood journey that refines my warrior ways,
The quarantine, the trauma-homeschooling, and all the things,
And s-u-r-r-e-n-d-e-r.
The heaviness of it all drives me to my knees in the dead of the night asking God if there is any other way…
And then He reminds me again of the Garden and the Cross that is coming…
Today is Wednesday but Friday is coming-
Surrender.
He grieved, He wrestled, He refused to run from the crushing spaces, He carried it all to the cross and He surrendered and sacrificed for you and for me.
“Yet not my will, but yours be done.”
The single greatest act in all of history-
Jesus willingly going to that cross.
Surrender.
Surrender is the choice that makes the yoke light, it is the only way to the cross, and it leads to the life after the tomb.
Friday’s coming but so is SUNDAY.
Surrender.
Not my will but yours be done God.
What do you need to surrender today friend?