I read a quote a few weeks ago by E.Stanley Jones that said, “If you don’t surrender to God, don’t think you don’t surrender. Everybody surrenders to something.”

It’s true that we always surrender. And unless it’s to the Lord, it’s never to anything good. There are so many negative things to surrender to, among them fear, anxiety, other people’s wishes and whims. Why not just cut to the chase and surrender to God and live the life we were meant to live?

I have found that when I am encountering unrest in my life it is most often because I am not surrendered to God on something. I must also surrender to both what He causes and what He allows. It’s important to invite Him to work through those things in my life. Those are the most difficult things! I would not say that I have difficulty running into the arms of the Father and surrendering to Him, but when it comes to surrendering things I want…yes, I have great difficulty with surrendering those things, or surrendering to things I believe are unfair. I have learned that God could care less about the fairness of a thing. I have also learned that good things are on the other side of whatever it is that I’m facing, as long as I keep a surrendered heart to the Lord.

We can try to extricate ourselves from every bad thing in life that could ever happen, but realize at some point that it’s impossible. We can’t totally avoid pain.

I have gone through things in life, leadership and ministry that don’t seem fair — even ludicrous at times. I’ve asked God to rectify those things and sometimes He does that in my favor and other times it goes the opposite of all I have dreamed of. And I have had to come the conclusion that if God doesn’t want me to have something…then why do I want it? As a Christ-follower, I want all that God has for me, but I have also had to come to terms with the fact that I also need to not want what He doesn’t want for me. That is really hard sometimes, but I have to remind myself that He has great things in store for me that I know nothing about yet.

I have also come to realize that it’s okay to grieve the things I’ve lost, even if they are just ideas of things I wanted and not realities yet. It’s okay to grieve things you wanted but did not receive. For that matter it’s okay to grieve anything. But what  is not okay is to stay stuck there and miss the goodness God has in store on the other side of that pain.

Carey Nieuwhof says that “Ministry is a series of ungrieved losses. Every loss in life demands an appropriate season of grieving.”

I feel like grieving things is never going to end, and I guess that is the way life is — two simultaneous tracks of joy and pain.

My kids moved far away this past month — meaning, all my kids and grand kids live far away now. There aren’t any words…I’ll just leave it at that.

My step father died last month. One of my favorite people in the entire world. He was elderly and I knew it would come at some point, but still…

The past year I have also grieved some ministry things that didn’t go the way I longed for them to. I have a close friend who had to leave a position that she didn’t want to leave, and most people didn’t want to see her leave either. This affected thousands of people, but especially those up-close-and-personal, like me. I cried tears over this transition, and went through a grieving process much like when someone dies. This loss impacts me on a daily basis and something I actually included in things I talk to my therapist about. I know in my heart that I will never feel about the new person the way I did and still do about my friend who once held this post and stewarded it so well. It is the end of an era. Nothing will ever be the same. I’m not giving up when it comes to my involvement, but I am moving forward with a heart that is still healing from the loss of a great leader.

I have also faced (and continue to face) some situations that aren’t healthy. I know God is not unjust, but sometimes people are. I have had to take those situations and surrender them to the Lord knowing He has something better in mind. I feel in my spirit that He is creating a larger space. One scripture I stand on is Psalm 18:19:

“He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Rather than focus on injustice, I choose to focus on surrender and spacious places, around the bend.

I choose to focus on God’s goodness.

I choose to focus on lessons to be learned that will make me wiser, stronger, and better equipped for what God has for me.

I choose to focus on ways I can impact the world today, large and small.

I choose to focus on ministry that is right in front of me, TODAY.

I choose to surrender, regarding each and everything that concerns my life.

The song says, “Can we skip to the good part?”

Yes, we can!

We can skip to the good part.

The way to skip to the good part is to stop wrestling with God.

Refuse to wrestle.

You can grieve, you can shed tears, but don’t fight.

Just surrender.

Do it quickly.

Do it now.

Through surrender we all get to the good part much, much sooner.