My God, am I grateful for what hasn’t worked out.

Imagine if I had gotten my way always. Imagine if exerting my will on my life, on others, on the institutions and organizations around me had come out according to my plan. I promise you, that would have been the most self-centered, disastrous implosion of circumstances and events. How could it be anything else? Aren’t we all so similarly situated that we want what we want, how we want it and exactly when?

The past three months of my life have been an exercise in letting go. I have absolutely railed against that surrender. I think I know best, after all. Who else knows what is best for me than me? The truthful answer to that question is probably anyone. It is not hard to find a person – or even an inanimate object – who can do a better job of navigating me in the direction of peace and serenity. I fell far, far away from that, to be sure. It would be better to hand my will and life over to a doorknob than to leave it in my own incapable hands.

So be it. I give up my life and surrender to the curious, awesome, magnificent unfolding of the Flow of Life. I am practicing, with greater and greater capacity, how to surrender daily. I am still not very good at it. But I am now aware that I am not good at it. That is the beginning I have been waiting for.

Please hear me though, I want to hold on so badly. I really do. I don’t want to release people I have held close who make me feel safe. I do not want to reinvent my career. I do not want to think about living anywhere else or changing my name or becoming still with the inevitable change and creeping tide that is sweeping over my life. But to fight is to flail and to loose precious energy that is needed to stay in the slip stream of Life’s flow. So it must be surrender. It must be this way.

Yet, my heart hurts. I want to stay. I do. So I negotiate with life. I plead to continue to have it my way. But then I am reminded in that quiet, calm voice Life always whispers in, that my way is fairly terrible. So I surrender. Or at least I practice surrender. Again.

Give ‘Em Hell