Surrender

Lately, I've been struggling with surrender.  The funny thing about surrender . . . it takes giving up, and giving up can be frightening.  In a war, an army surrenders and hopes the victors are lenient - but those who surrender know that are owed no leniency.

I have received a clear path from God, but surrendering, in this case, doesn't sit well with me, because I know it will be painful.  I know that it's the path of most resistance, and I don't want that conflict.  But God has also made it clear that this is the only way to freedom, the only way to obedience, the only way to reconciliation in this particular circumstance, and yet I continue to kick against the goads, hoping to muscle my way out of my predicament (a predicament, I might add, that I got myself into in the first place).  Somehow, I keep trying to prove that my way is better than God's way.

Guess how well that's going?

And so, I stay trapped.  I stay a giant humanoid hamster, running in the same wheel that, no matter how fast I run, leaves me going nowhere.  Just like a hamster, I seem to think that this time, maybe, just maybe, if I run really, really hard, that wheel will make some progress.

My brother had a hamster when we were growing up.  That animal was stupid.  I used to watch it grab a piece of food, bury it in the corner of the cage, immediately run to the opposite corner, and try to find the food that it just buried.  That hamster spent most of his short life looking horribly confused.

So I read my Scriptures every day and, often times, I put them into practice.  I pray every day and, often times, my prayers are filled with way more confession and thanksgiving than requests.  But when it comes to the hard obedience, the obedience that takes dealing with pain, confessing sins we'd rather keep hidden, and accepting the consequences of potentially broken relationships, I'm no better than my brother's stupid, stupid hamster.