Our society is in the midst of an emotional meltdown. We are restless, irritable, fearful, frustrated and our tempers are about to blow. None of this is how we want our lives to be, but our pressure cooker society has pushed us to the emotional limit. We deserve relief from getting tormented by daily stress. We deserve to be happy, joyous and comfortable in our own skin and nurtured in our relationships. It’s a waste of life to put up with the stress, fatigue, depression, abuse, and chronic anxiety that many of us put up with today.
I’ve never fit into the mainstream because I always colored outside the lines. Not quite knowing where I fit created a lot of anxiety and insecurity in me which I found relief from in alcohol and other chemicals. At the beginning I felt freedom and solace in alcohol. However, my life began shifting in unexpected ways that required a complete surrender and psychic change because the alcohol was killing me. I needed to find a way out. The only way was letting go. Letting go would require having the faith that all would be well even though I had no clear vision of how.
When I was graced with the willingness to surrender to a Higher Power, I didn’t fully understand what I was signing up for. I’ve had to let go a lot in life. On July 1, 1987 I let go of addiction. Then I let go of my home and a business so that I could go back to school. I exchanged a career for a life of service. During the move from my home I gave away my possessions to make a fresh start and took a job at Barnes and Noble. Then I had to let go of the lovers who left me and my messed up views about life, sex, love and intimacy. I had to let go of my obsessive attachments to relationships, worldly clamors within myself, my desire for the approval of my parents and my desire that the world approve of my being gay.
Throughout all of it, I surrendered again and again, trusting a Power greater than myself.
Surrendering is not always easy. It often requires a change in identity, a giving up of old ideas of who we are. I, like most of us, have created strategies for survival in an unstable world, forming a superstructure of defenses, denials, and creative coping mechanisms that give me the illusion of control. After a life of imagining that we can order and control every aspect of our lives, including other people, we need time to build trust that something else is running the show, and … that this deep force is benevolent.
When we practice surrender, we discover that it comes in increments. Over time we gradually relax our grip on an issue, person, emotion or denial pattern. We let go in layers, one day at a time, one moment at a time. When we do let go, a little more faith emerges, and as a result we relinquish control more easily the next time. This is the path to surrender–a heart-felt path to the other side.
When we surrender, we gradually dismantle the judgment machine, the fortress of denial and defenses that kept us from truly perceiving our reality. We may have actively protected ourselves from the truth, and when the truth reveals itself, it often hurts. The path of surrender teaches us that when we feel pain, we have some work to do on an attachment.
We learn that our suffering ultimately has the potential for spiritual expansion and liberation. We suffer more as we hang on to our justifications, defenses, explanations and rationalizations, perhaps developing difficulties like health and relationship problems, low self-esteem or the inability to find a suitable place for ourselves in the world. Many of us find that the level of pain increases until we become willing to explore the issues behind our attachments.
As adults we have to become strong enough to begin—in safety, with support and guidance—to peel away the layers of protection that have blocked us from the reality of our history, our own emotions and our behavior.
It’s Your Turn:
Do you frequently feel a pervasive restlessness and desire for something more?
Does this yearning take you into destructive or self-destructive relationships and activities that only seem to temporarily provide a fix for the missing piece?
Do you frantically try to fill that emptiness with external activities and/or substances that never seems to quite satisfy the ache?
Is the pain that you are experiencing moving you toward a place of greater possibilities or is it the result of doing the same things over and over expecting different results?
Do you overreact when something gets in the way of your personal fulfillment, determination and expectations?
This is a particularly painful, traumatic and confusing time for all of us. I want you to know that you are not alone and that I’m available to help. In the most difficult times in my own life, I have been fortunate enough to have teachers, spiritual directors, and mentors who helped me find meaning and direction in and through the darkness, creating something new and transforming the pain into something life-giving. I see these times as invitations to open and move. I invite you to join me in getting to the other side. To read more about how, click here.
Love & blessings,
Paula M. Smith, M.Div., MFT