Sweet Surrender

This summer I’ve been reflecting on control. My sister gave me this beautiful Surrender Novena.It perfectly encapsulates the truths of the Spirit that have been guiding us in previous posts, and of course, it was just what I needed. 

Surrender.

When you pray do you start out with a list of your needs, petitions, thanksgivings, or sorrows? Does this progress into your list of ways you’ve been working on redemption? Are you doing all the work and making sure God knows?

Or, do you do as the second reading in this past Sunday’s liturgy of the word suggests? 

The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. 

And the one who searches hearts

knows what is the intention of the Spirit,

because he intercedes for the holy ones according to God's will.

(Romans 8:26-27)

It’s hard to give up control…

Even when we pray.

Depending on your natural temperament, relinquishing control may come slightly easier for the easy going phlegmatic and more difficult for the brazen choleric, but other crosses of anxiety and despair might dominate in its place. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety lately. Mainly because everyone I speak with I feel is struggling with it in some way or another. I argue it is very connected to our sense of control. Perhaps it is the impossible demands of our culture and influences we can’t escape or even worse aren’t even aware of…wordly pressures for esteem, a picture perfect house or body, popularity…even on social media. 

If we can use the fruits of the spirit as a tool to understand God’s will in our lives and for reassurance that we are His path and not ours, then I also think we can use anxiety as a measure as well. I believe it is a modern day tactic of Satan to distract us from our beautiful relationship with God. 

Does this sound familiar?

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day.
In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

It should. The priest says it every mass before we conclude the Our Father. It’s important.

Let me share how easily the devil can work through a very ordinary moment for any working family and how we might use our sense of anxiety and our sense of the fruits of the Spirit to do God's will:

We’ve returned home from being up north. There are ten loads of laundry to be done. With hubby on second shift, I return home from work to a house in total disorder. His response: It was a rough morning. 

I aim for compassion, but feel resentment instead. The anxiety sets in. I have worked tirelessly to organize things so the kids toys can be enjoyed and for our little house to not seem cluttered. Things are sorted and labeled. This box is action figures, this ziplock bag the little weapons, this old Halloween bucket the blocks, vehicles in this toy box, baby learning toys in the laundry basket…teachers and moms alike reading this know the power of ziploc and containers. All I see is that nothing is where it should be and not only that, it is all mixed together. 

I focus on it and my anxiety grows even bigger. All these nice things we have for the boys now seem like junk, unusable, the children disinterested if they have to move furniture just to find the parts that might make it do something.  I start looking at my home and seeing how small it is, how unfinished it is. My eyes sees all the flaws instead of the blessings. I’m tired from my own long day.

More anxiety.  The devil loves it. He attacks. It grows into questions about my marriage. I start to think falsely that my husband doesn't appreciate me or all the little things I do to manage the household while working full time. How hard is it to stop a clock every half an hour and pick things up, I think to myself? The compassion lessens. I don’t stop to consider that I had asked my husband to help the boys make a card or craft for mom’s birthday later on my way out the door. A task completely out of his comfort zone. The equivalent of asking me to fix the battery and motor on a driving toy. The devil wants me to lose my empathy. He wants me to focus on the disorder. He relishes in the anxiety.

I say the words from the Surrender Novena:

O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!

I say them again…

and again.

I step back and refocus and count the blessings…Not only do we have beautiful things but we have grandparents still alive who I can connect these toys to from Christmases and birthdays. Rather than burying myself in resentment, I open up communication with my husband and tell him how I felt coming home, then I hear about the frustrations of his morning.…there is space for the Holy Spirit again. The anxiety is still there, but it is not ruling me. It is just making me think in a healthy way about some realistic long term and short term solutions. 

The devil shrinks back. I have surrendered to the Spirit and the evil one knows he is no match now. 

The next morning the kids and I have a “sort party.” In this process, we start making donate pile. We talk about our blessings. We pray for the less fortunate. We pray for the people who have gifted us many of the items. The fruits of the Spirit dominate more and more!

Next, I start to work on other little parts of the house that needed a good Spring cleaning that we never had.  I choose a few key areas that I can conquer and control during nap time …clothes that haven’t been worn in years…make up that is dried up and old that needs to be tossed. I do NOT stare at the doors that need to go up or the space that might one day be a second bathroom that we so desperately need. The Spirit helps me to see what I can control and what I cannot. I feel peace, joy, and self control. Order is restored. 

God has won this very typical, very ordinary battle.

Jesus, I love you. Thank you for taking care of everything.

God's Will Be Done.

No matter what your temperament is our culture is a constant barrier to the most essential relationship in our life.  Before can grow in virtue through self knowledge and deepening our relationships with others, we need to first establish a rhythm in life that allows us to be in relationship with God. Everything about our culture opposes this necessity and the devil takes advantage of it in very subversive and sneaky ways. 

So often what begins as a good intention and even a practice in virtue can quickly transform into a barrier between us and God if we are not careful. I have found that even in my deeply impassioned service to the Lord through the sacrifices associated with my work that it all holds very little value if my marriage or family suffers. 

I have been trying to walk the talk by engaging in the same habits of prayer discussed in earlier posts, so I might better hear God’s voice and know it is my Lord. 

I have always prayed every day, but it is only recently that I have reached a level of metacognition in my prayer life…meaning I am readily noting and aware when I am repeating traditional prayers without thinking deeply about their words, noticing how distractible I am during spontaneous prayer, and quite honestly, thirsting for those moments of deep silence that my son would call “cuddling with Jesus.” 

In the past two weeks, during the period of silence in my blog, I was in my deepest state of prayer since the news that my husband and I had a very slim chance of ever conceiving and a narrow window of time to do so before a hysterectomy would be the chosen outcome for my medical condition. 

Those who are not new to this blog know that we have been blessed with three beautiful boys and we do attribute the conception of our first born to the intercessions of St. Gerard, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and many many prayers offered up for us by loved ones. 

God’s will be done.

I knew it then and I trusted, no matter the outcome. In the matter of procreation, God’s will would be or not be. We simply needed to discern if we would keep trying. It sounds so easy, but our humanity is so fragile and the devil one preys on it.

You see the evil one probably preferred we cave into our helplessness and our grief. By doing so we would cut God’s will out of the picture and what a victory for the opponent. Instead we faithfully decided to bear all disappoint, which could have been debilitating at least for a time, and we continued to play our part to cooperate with God’s will. 

We all know of other serious matters that God’s will is not so black and white. We must have a serious and intentional prayer life to know the will of God. The path that appears to be the most obvious…is not always. 

I am revisiting the autobiography of St. Terese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, and the following statement summarizes my own struggle in the journey toward holiness:

“Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He will us to be.” 

As I wrestle with the discernment process in making life decisions, my goal is to be living intentionally in a way that allows me to hear God’s voice …the humility to seek spiritual direction when I am uncertain …and total trust in God that he loves me so much that so long as I am trying with my whole heart to please Him that He will never abandon me. 

When has God’s will been cloudy in your life? Or, when has it been crystal clear? How do you hear God’s voice amidst all of the other distractions in our day to life?