Surrender

Tonight, after we got home from work, my husband Trevor and I got into a fight.

The reason for our big blow out?

Well, I partially blame pregnancy hormones (because man, they are a-raging...), but really, the conflict surrounded a camping trip. A bachelor-party-type camping trip that Trevor's been planning for his cousin. I'm not even going. But see, the issue was that my husband, in getting ready for this trip, was doing everything wrong.


See, instead of getting the camper out this morning, he waited until tonight... but tonight he decided that the lawn should really be mowed first, before he left for the weekend. And then, instead of starting to mow, he'd noticed me washing dishes and decided to help by pulling big leftover containers out of the fridge and dumping the food that had gone bad so I could wash the containers. Which all served to infuriate me.

What the camper would have looked like... had it been set up.

Because, me? I would have my outfits for the weekend laying out on the bed by now, almost ready to go into a duffel bag. The camper would be airing out already, food for the weekend planned and packed and ready to go into coolers. I'd sweep out the tiny camper floor and vacuum the rugs tomorrow morning, and by the time we got off work tomorrow, we'd throw the already-packed bags into the camper and go.

Of course, that's just not how Trevor does things.

And because he's not doing it my way, he's doing it wrong, and that drives me crazy.

"This is not your priority right now!" I yelled at him as he set another dish in the sink. "YOU are supposed to be getting ready to go! The camper isn't even out yet and you should have done it yesterday!!"

"Can't you just let me do what I have to do, and stop trying to get me to do it your way?" he asked me.

No, apparently, I cannot. 

This past weekend, we stopped at the spillway by the lake with my sister, my parents, and my little nephew, to see if we could see some fish.

There are usually quite a few fish at the spillway. They get carried over the edge with the water, and struggle against the current to propel themselves back into the lake.

My nephew, five years old, was enthralled by the big brown carp pushing against the rushing water. Every once and a while, one of the fish would gather its strength and try to make a grand escape up the concrete wall. It never worked.

There are a lot of fish in this picture. It's just hard to get 'em on camera!

"What happens when the fish get tired?" he asked Trevor.

"They go back into the lake," Trevor replied. "Once they stop fighting it, the water carries them along the passageway and back into the lake."

The carp were exhausting themselves trying to get back to where they wanted to be, and all they had to do was stop swimming and let the water do the work for them.




You would think that by now I'd have learned, at least a little, to stop trying to control everything and just let go. To stop fighting it.

But no, it's a lesson I'm finding I have to be reminded of again and again.

I want things my way. I have specific ideas about how everything should get done, I have plans, I have expectations about how life should go. And when those plans aren't followed through, when my ideas aren't respected, when my expectations aren't met, I get irritated. Or downright angry.

I do it with my husband, and I do it with God.

Try as I might to change my husband's laid back temperment, he's going to do things the way he does them, and fighting with him about it only serves to put us both in bad moods and delays the process even more.



And with God? I fight Him even more.

He tells me to be still, to know Who He is. To trust enough to let go.

And I'm like a fish trying to swim up the spillway. If I'd just stop fighting it, God would take me to the place where I'm meant to be. He knows what I need so much better than I do, and yet, here I am, struggling against the current, using all my energy going nowhere.

How many times do I look up at a wall standing between me and what I want, and think that it's a sign from God to try harder, to do more? When really, it very well may be just the opposite. Maybe I'm supposed to stop doing so much struggling and do more surrendering.

I just have to let go of my need to control everything, have to stop trying to do what only God can do.

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