Surrender

This is Jen. My day job is in a library in a rural area. As such, I see a lot of Christian books cross my desk. Some of those books are about surrendering to your faith. As someone who is not religiously inclined, these kinds of books baffle me. Until today when I checked in yet another book about surrendering to God and something in my head clicked. 

I’ve done this. Surrendering. Not to the Christian God, or any other god for that matter. I was raised without religion, so didn’t grow up with that influence in my background. I have reached a point where my anxiety, or at the very least my internal struggle with something, was so intense that I just stopped and surrendered to the universe, to myself, it doesn’t matter who or what.

The feeling of surrender was like getting splashed in the face with cool water. Not cold, not hurting, not extreme. Like accepting a hug from a particularly comfortable stranger who touches some hidden area of your soul that was aching. It was an act of acceptance, of knowing that this situation sucks, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it but endure it. There is a relief in that kind of surrender. 

I’m not always able to do this. There are times when my trauma response is stronger than my ability to accept it and I shut down. Those moments always come with a rebound depression, an anxiety that I somehow failed even though I was just doing what I believed I  could to survive. Surrender doesn’t come with a hangover. Surrender comes with relief. 

I’d like to find a book about surrendering like this without the lens of religion. I think it would be helpful to people like me, and to people who have deconstructed from their religious trauma and do not want to heal with that perspective. While the idea of surrender makes sense to me, I won’t read any of those books simply because they are from a Christian lens. Is that prejudicial? Of course. But I have had very few examples of positive Christianity. I’ve seen how damaging many forms of Christianity are, especially here in America. 

Surrender isn’t giving up. It’s taking a few steps with the current to regain your footing. It’s a pause to reflect. 

I’m coming back to this a few days later, after having an emotional meltdown. Stress just builds up and builds up and reaches the point where it has to go somewhere, and I melted down. I didn’t surrender. I just cried. I felt the helplessness that comes with having so much on your shoulders and nowhere to put it down. And now? Now I feel so tired. So numb. And I’ve lost where I was going with this. So now, I’m going to go and lay down and rest. Maybe I’ll find surrender there.