These thoughts were shared at the 2019 Winter Retreat as part of a session on “Surrender”.
Surrender was the most confusing, hard to get-my-head-around concept I heard in the SA fellowship. I heard it from the very beginning. Surrender chips. Step 3 prayers of surrender. White Book readings. It was everywhere. It seemed to be a fairly simple thought, but if it was the key to something, maybe I didn’t understand it and that’s why some things remained locked to me. Maybe it isn’t simple? Maybe it isn’t something I can understand or execute in my life?
So after 4 years in the program, have I figured out Surrender yet? Ha! No, but I have learned a few principles that helped me as I started my journey towards understanding surrender.
- It is OK to have questions and not understand it at first. I thought maybe my brain was broken and it was something that everyone understood except me. But hearing from so many over the years that it is a process of learning, made me relax and be patient with myself.
- I don’t have to understand it to begin doing it. Good thing. I can start with what I think it means and learn as I progress through the program.
- It is a multi-faceted concept. Like the seven blind men that encountered an elephant, we may each start at a different point. It is OK for me and someone else to have a different perspective on surrender.
So, what is surrender? How does it work? What does surrender feel like? How do I learn it? What muscle do I clench? I don’t have all the answers. But here are a few things I have learned as I have tried to understand this key concept.
- Surrender is not an action, it is an attitude. It is an attitude of the heart and mind. It is the source of the reaction or action that may look like surrender.
- Surrender is relinquishing my attempt at control. Surrender is when my heart and mind acknowledge and admit that I can’t do this by myself and that I need help from my Higher Power and the fellowship. In a sense, I give up, stop trying, abandon stubbornness, cease striving, and wait patiently for my Higher Power to do what I have asked.
- I can’t make myself surrender anything. But by doing the healthy steps and actions of the SA program, such as making phone calls, checking things in, attending meetings, doing the steps, praying, meditating, service work, etc. it aligns me with what my Higher Power wants to do in my heart.
- I am likely already surrendering and just don’t know it. By doing all those things just mentioned and other healthy choices and actions, I am saying I am not an island and that, is surrender. I am saying I need help from my Higher Power and my brothers and that, is surrender. By making phone calls, I am surrendering. By attending meetings, I am surrendering.
- Surrender is not permanent. It is not a one-time event. I may have to surrender and choose surrender-motivated actions and behaviors every 10 minutes. Or more. Yesterday’s surrender does not work today.
- The opposite of surrender is me trying to meet my own needs, control my own circumstances. When I can’t, which is like always, it generates frustration, anger, and resentment in me. The presence of anger in my life is one of my best surrender leak detectors. The level of underlying, on-going, low-grade anger simmering under the surface that bursts forth with intensity from time to time, points to and is a result of the frustration that comes from trying to self-manage and not surrender. (This last thought was shared by someone discovering these truths himself for the first time.)
- Surrender is the gateway to the peace and serenity my life lacks. I used to think peace and serenity is what I would have when others treated me right, my circumstances improved, my wife stopped being so annoying, when God took this addiction away. Peace and serenity are not out there being kept from me. I experience them internally as I stop trying to be God of my own universe and let God be God in mine.
- Surrender requires trusting in my Higher Power and relying on others. This might be why the batteries on your surrender aren’t working. It is not something you can generate.