Surrender is not for sissies.

But it is common for people to misunderstand what surrender is. One misunderstanding results in an image of a woman who has given up. She lays down in the road, inviting the world to run her down.

“Come and get me,” she whispers, and she means it. Sort of.

But when I was this woman (and no matter how strong we are, we have all had moments when we were this woman), I was not expressing true surrender. Instead, this was my last attempt to evade true consciousness: let’s get dramatic, let’s get crazy, let’s put on a show for all who’s watching. Let’s see who shows up, buys a ticket, let’s see who pulls me out of the road. Please, send someone to pull me out of the goddamn road.

True surrender does not happen until grace shows up.

Grace can wear many faces and show up in many ways, but for me, it usually comes pretty quietly. Neon lights don’t flash and no mad, exciting rescues happen. Grace can mean lying in the road so long and realizing there hasn’t been a passing car for hours. Grace has kept the cars away. Grace is realizing that you would feel better if you got up off the road, climbed into a bath and rested your eyes. Grace is asking for help. Grace is help arriving before the prayer leaves your lips. Grace is the gentle voice inside you that says “This is just one moment. One terrible moment. Get up, get moving, let’s go, darling one, and put this one behind us. This isn’t the place for you.”

And it is while sitting in that bathtub resting your aching body and your broken heart that the tears come. They don’t come because of all the pain you’ve endured, though that’s part of it. They don’t come because you were so close to rock bottom, even death, and you were saved by something you didn’t understand, but that’s part of it.

The tears come because you recognize it’s time.

You realize that your life has a before and after, and this is the moment between the two.

Because you have lived a comfortable existence, oh yes, painful to be sure, but in that pain was all the familiarity of your entire existence. It’s what you’ve known. It’s where you fit. It’s what you understand.

But in this next moment you will be asked to move forward with a new awareness: once you understand surrender, you can’t un-understand it. That is the first fruit of your willingness to let surrender take you.

The realization comes to you that all this time you thought you were directing your life by sitting in the driver’s seat, but when you pull back you see that really the car was being propelled forward by a tow-truck called fear. You seemed to be in motion, yes, but you were really just hurtling  toward Hell while attempting to steer.

I was hurtling toward Hell by trying to control everything in my life:

I was controlling the ecstasy and agony of life’s dramas by numbing with sugar and caffeine.
I was controlling the future with worry.
I was controlling the future with avoidance.
I was controlling the outcome by staying within familiar territory at all times.

I thought if I surrendered I would just disappear. My life would fall apart. Nothing would make sense anymore. I wouldn’t be safe.

But ultimately, none of this control and fear-driven living had made me any safer. Instead of letting Divine Intelligence run the show, my small self was directing my life, so that it could never be anything Bigger. It simply couldn’t be any Bigger than what I could see in front of me. And fear vision is so small it’s like looking through sunglasses at night. Living small just isn’t safe because it isn’t the Plan. You are really only protected by the Universe when you are playing out the Role you were meant to play, because as long as your lower self is in control, the Universe can’t do its job properly. And it is designed to do its job in a beautiful way. It’s just that your lower self is stopping its flow. If you haven’t stepped into your Starring Role, you can’t afford bodyguards!

When you surrender, you put your car keys in the Universe’s hands. And the Universe shows up with a chauffeur and a stretch limo, and it comes with the GPS for your True Life Path.

There is no going back. Will you wrestle with fear and fear-minded living? Yes, you will. But you will stop seeing it as the One and Only Truth.

Will you have to remind yourself to Surrender? Yes, yes, you will. Your old ways of worrying and trying to orchestrate every moment are not going to go away overnight. But you have been gifted with new eyes, and you can always choose.

Instead of regretting the past, we can surrender to what was.

Instead of resisting the present, especially when it’s painful but also when it’s thrilling, we can surrender to what is.

And instead of worrying about what tomorrow will bring, which is something we have no control over anyway, we can surrender to what will be.

When you put this kind of Trust in the Universe, the fruits of your willingness are, quite simply, everywhere. Your fruits will be different than mine, but I have no doubt they will be plentiful.