01 Oct Do I Trust Him Enough to Do This?

“I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee my blessed Savior, I surrender all.” I love this song and most often sing it when tension occurs between what I want to accomplish and what I’m able to accomplish, thus frustrating me. I’ve learned to step back when such a wall lunges up before me and ask God, “Why is this here? What does it mean? Is my motive wrong? Was this not Your Will also? What should I do?” Sometimes I get an answer right then if I’m still and wait. Most times I have to search the bible, my feelings, writings of those wiser than I, friends, T.V, billboards, the lips of grandchildren… Who knows where the answer will come from? And if I don’t find an answer, I’ll probably drop the whole thing. I figure it wasn’t meant to be. Then I give it to God and sing “I surrender all” and feel the frustration melt away as a new day dawns.

Why should we surrender our life to Jesus? Isn’t it our life? Didn’t God give us free will and a mind to discern how to use our life? Think about what the opposite of surrender is. In battle, it is to continue to fight. Do we really want to fight Jesus? Is that not what we do when we hold back certain parts of our lives? We joyfully give tithes because it’s a portion of our finances, and we know without God’s help, we wouldn’t have finances, anyway. Yet, how cheerfully do we offer God all our finances? Suddenly, we worry about how we’ll provide for ourselves. Yielding ourselves and our possessions to Jesus is admitting it’s He who provides for us all along. It is actually very freeing. Without God sustaining us, we wouldn’t take another breath. We’d disappear from existence. Knowing this, it should be easier to offer everything to God. To say, “You take care of this for me, Lord.” After all, He has a greater vision for us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our talents, strengths, and weaknesses and why they’re there. We read the quote from Jeremiah, “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.” NAB (Jer 29:11) Bolstering my resolve with quotes like these, I can easily offer him my life to do with as He will. Well, parts of my life, if I’m truthful. There is one part, that gives me the greatest pause.

Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier injured in battle, learned surrender: “I offer You my memory, understanding, my entire will. All I ask in return is Your Love and Your Grace. That is enough for me.”

You’ve got it. I balk at offering my memory. It’s taken me so long to learn and cultivate the things I needed to learn to be able to live with adversity. To live in freedom from fear of pain, torture, murder, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning storms, poverty, starvation, crippling illness, horrible things happening to your loved ones… all the things that pop up in your thoughts (especially if you watch the news on TV and have an overactive, creative mind). Such thoughts quickly dig in and spread their roots when you don’t trust in God’s love for you. Counting your blessings is one of the first things I learned to use to help this. Praising God in all situations was the next. The more you thank and praise Him for, the more things you can think of to thank and praise Him for. Then, I learned to spend silent moments with my Creator in a heart to heart conversation without words. It is the most rewarding and energizing yet tranquil time one can experience. He lets me know I’m loved infinitely by Him, that He is always with me, that I can place all my concerns on His shoulders, and that’s all that matters.

Yet, in the everyday world, I hesitate at surrendering my memory and understanding to Him out of concern for my children. They’re adults, yes, but they have their families and burdens, and I don’t wish on them the care of an elderly parent who through stroke or Alzheimer’s changes daily from the parent they knew and loved to someone they don’t really know but are resolved to love. A parent who does not know who they are.

My dad suffered several strokes starting at age 85. He forgot what things were. A very active man became an easy chair TV watcher. An insurance salesman who was an avid newspaper reader, he’d enjoyed chatting with everyone about anything. After the strokes, his cheerful demeanor didn’t change, but his ideas became strange indeed. At first, I would be shocked and respectfully disagree with him, but then I realized they weren’t his arguments. He had no idea what he was saying. So I just said, “Oh really? Hmm. Interesting.” As if I’d never heard that one before.

My mom was ten years younger than my dad, and she began to experience memory loss and panic attacks. She’d depended on Dad to take care of all the finances and driving. Now she was his untrained nurse. After an episode of driving a few blocks to get groceries and getting lost, she depended on her kids to drive her around. Moving her to an adult condo community helped for about a year in which Dad passed away. I won’t describe all the things that happened with my mother, it would take a massive tome. She lived to the age of 92, slowly forgetting more and more, including who that man was in the picture (her husband of 60 years), the memories of her life, and her children.

As a result, I try to keep my brain healthy to avoid being a burden on others, but also to continue awareness and conversation with my children, to continue learning and keeping up with the amazing technology of this time, and to continue sharing my Precious Lord with any who have ears to hear. I also look at the slow degeneration of my mother’s mind and see that each time she needed more and more care and protection; God provided it for her. Her panic attacks subsided. A fiery independent soul, she began to depend on others. I remind myself that my mother’s life was much different from mine. A toxic childhood had left her without the ability to make a certain chemical needed by her brain. She was diagnosed as bipolar. At one point, she was counseled to have “shock treatments” as they called them.  She lost much of her long-term memory then. One Sunday, my sister and I took her out to a restaurant and visited with her. Her caretaker said she would live to be 100. We both kissed her goodbye when we left. The next night, she ate dinner and went to bed for a nap. Her caretaker brought her medicine into her an hour later. She had died in her sleep. Not a bad way to go.

Tender, loving Lord, help me to trust you enough to surrender all I have and all I am to you and not to ask for any of it back. Let Your will be mine, Lord. Let me live in Your Love and love with Your Love. Thank you, Lord, ahead of time, for answering my prayer. “I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee my precious Savior. I surrender all.”