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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Day 6: Surrender

The summer of 2000 began a journey of explosive inner transformation in my life. This period was marked by changes in my thoughts. Lies I had believed were replaced with truth and specific themes that altered my perspective and how I lived emerged.

After the school year ended and I began summer break, I was sick in bed for about a week. During that week of bed rest I read and journaled. I became aware that ever since the "rug had been pulled out" and I had experienced a series of unfortunate events over a decade earlier, I had been living with a self-protective stance. My decisions and my interactions with people were guided by a core promise to myself never to let people "treat me so badly" again. This soul level promise was in conflict with the promise I had made to God years earlier to serve Him with my life. As I tried to keep both promises, I experienced inner conflict.

As I lay on my bed, I wrote a prayer of surrender to God. I acknowledged that I was unable to protect myself and that running my life in an effort to do so was not working. I surrendered myself to God's ability to care for me (He is so much more capable than I!) and I asked Him to teach me how to live as He desired rather than trying to protect myself.

That prayer opened a door to many marvelous transformative steps in my life. The first ones came out of a trip to Belize that summer. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.




I would love to hear your stories of transformational pivot points!



4 comments:

  1. 'Lies I had believed were replaced with truth' ... don't you love when this happens?

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  2. I have never been brave enough to let God protect me, instead of myself. Interesting, something to think about. Can't wait to read about your trip tomorrow to Belize

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  3. Hi Anonymous, it wasn't an easy thing to do and I have had to do it more than once, as it is easy to seek to protect myself.

    One other thing I didn't mention is that God at times led me to do things that were self-protective - especially to establish boundaries and to act with wisdom and discernment in potentially dangerous situations. That is different than the methods I had been using to protect myself.

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