About Surrender — What It Is and What It Is Not

Clips, Concerns and Conundrums from Candace

A funny thing happened on the way to my stories, I tripped over Conundrum! Corrected and on we go!

A friend and I were ruminating over things this past week and we were talking about how difficult it is to surrender to things out of our control. As a philosophical ideal it is just nearly impossible. Trying to do this is like trying to be taller, it doesn’t work. What we realized is that surrender is not something you can make happen. It is something we come to…or it comes to us.

I met it head on when my mother died in November of 2001. I had spent my life trying to take care of her. I had encouraged her to move in with us. I had sent her inspirational material and spent hours talking through things with her as she struggled with her circumstances. She was my rock too, in many ways. But she faced some extremely difficult challenges in her later years and I never gave up trying to help her live her life with less stress. Truth be told, she never wanted me to do that. She only wanted me to love and accept her.

When she died unexpectedly in November of 2001, I had no choice but to surrender. Surrender dropped me into a freezing lake of hopelessness. It was choiceless, the surrender I faced in that moment felt like crap. I could no longer help her at that point or change anything for her. Had I realized that fact when she was alive my own personal experience with her would have been lifted somehow. She and I would have been far happier, more peaceful, and I would have enjoyed the time and the life I had with her.

So WTF does this have to do with the election you ask?

This is a time when we must surrender to the reality of what we face.

The outcome is still unknown and even though there are still things that can be done for sure, those decisions rest solely with the primary players, not with you and me. This is about surrendering our fears, weighing the facts, and waiting. It’s about finding a way to patience. A much-needed virtue if we are to appreciate the preciousness of the life we are gifted to live. Otherwise, it will fly past us and we cannot get those moments back. There is no “Back to the Future” scenerio.

As is possible, don’t allow or give power to anyone who would steal the beauty of our life from us. Especially this litigious President. He doesn’t deserve that kind of power, not ever. Not even if he stays in office. It is time to awaken from the nightmare of his irresponsible leadership (if that has been your experience with him) and embrace all that is good. He doesn’t deserve anything other than irrelevance at this point. Let those who know how to take care of the legal side of things do their job.

What we can do is surrender to the reality and then create the kind of world we wanted for and hoped for with Biden as a President. If he is not elected, then we have work to do. If he is elected, we have work to do. One person cannot be responsible to make the changes we seek; we must do that one person at a time do that. We are that “one person” That is our responsibility and well worth surrendering to.