Fu*k This Sh**!! “Surrender” is the REAL Curse Word.

I want to be strong. I want to be powerful. I want to be wealthy. I want a happy family. I want friends. I want a house that cleans itself. I don’t think I want too much? I want the same things you want. I think. I want the things the world tells me is good. I want things that are easy.

I remember sitting under the big oak tree three years ago now. It is right by the smallest creek, which is really no more then a trickle. But to Southern Californians, it is a creek as we ever get and it is heavenly. I laid down right next to that creek and looked up into the lacey pattern of the oak tree leaves against the sky. I seek out oak trees down here in Southern California because there are so few, and they remind me of my oak tree I sat under at home as a child. As a child my oak tree was on the hill top behind my house, it was where I always went to hear God speak to me. I have been going to hill tops for a long time to find God. But this oak tree isn’t on a hilltop, it is down by a creek, down a obscured path, behind some houses. It feels like the adult version of a secret fort. I found it once wandering down a hidden trail, and now it is my oak tree. My secret place. Is it just me who still wants secret forts even as an adult? I love my secret places.

As I laid down and looked up at the way the light dances through the oak leaves, with the sounds of the tiny San Diego river bubbling nearby, joy filled my heart. Life was so good. But as the brook babbled, the light flickered, the oak tree danced in the wind, and my heart sang, I heard God whisper to me that loss was coming.

It had been a time of abundance in my life. If I was a farmer I would say I was in a time of harvest. Harvesting the best fruits of life. A time where I have been given everything I could have ever dreamed of. My marriage was solid and steady, the best it had ever been. My photography business was just right; the amount of clients that helped me make an amount of money that made life easy and fun, but not so many clients that I was stressed. And as soon as this Covid thing dies down, I had plans to grow my business and make it even better. My kids were 6, 8, and 12… the best years….what I still refer to as the “Golden Years of Parenting”. My friends and I were all close, getting together pretty regularly to encourage and inspire and pray for one another. I had a tribe. I had an incredible family life, a supportive and wonderful husband, and finally I was in a stage of parenting that i really liked. I had a work life that inspired me and gave me unspeakable joy. I even had the blessing of trying homeschool with my kids for the first time, and loving it. Life was good.

So when I heard God whisper that loss was coming, I felt terrified. I remember calling my friend and weeping on the phone. I remember telling her that I didn’t want faith if it meant God was going to take things, if I had to lose good things in my life. I wanted to cling to it all tightly and not give it to Him. My friend paused, sat with me in my sorrow as a good friend does, and then she said some of the most comforting words she could have said, “I don’t know Ginette. I think the rain will come in life whether or not we believe in God, whether or not we surrender. I think the rain will always fall and we will always get wet. But God is like an umbrella. He doesn’t take away the storms, but he sure does help block some of the rain.”

After I sat with her words, I knew she was right. I felt like Peter who told Jesus when he asked his disciples if they wanted to leave like the others had. Pete had responded, “Lord, where else would we go?” I didn’t want the loss coming, but there was no where else I wanted to be then with my Lord. By this time in my life, Jesus had become my best friend. After that day, I felt grateful for his loving warning. It felt to me like he was giving me the opportunity to better soak in these good days. To notice them and appreciate them. To have gratitude for them. I was more grateful for the sunshine each day, knowing that the rain would soon come.

It was a few months before that I had been reading Corrie Ten Boom’s book “The Hiding Place”. I was so moved by Corrie’s faith that I read every book I could find that was authored by her at my local library. The thing I loved most about Corrie was her faith, her willingness to surrender to God and love God even in the unspeakably hard times. Even when it meant living in a concentration camp. Her ability to find God in a concentration camp made it easy for me to find God’s fingerprints all over the darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her faith really moved me. Specifically her willingness to surrender to God. I remember falling to the floor of my bedroom, face to the floor, months before the time under the oak tree, telling God that I was ready to surrender to Him. I had given my life to God years and years ago, but God was pressing on my heart that although I had given my life to Him, I hadn’t really surrendered it to Him. I loved control, predictability. I loved to have things organized. I often tell people that my house is not clean so much as organized. (Just walk in and admire my boxes, but please leave your white gloves at home). Boxing things gave me a sense of control, a sense of control made me feel less afraid.

I didn’t really know what surrender looked like. But I have always been a girl who loved God, who wanted to give everything to Him. I have always loved him with my whole being for as long as I can remember. A recent dive into old high school journals has proved this to be true. Long before I wrote love poems for my first boy friend, I was writing them to the Lord.

I love Him. I trust Him. What on earth could happen? I was ready to surrender.

Or so I thought.

This was before the oak tree moment when God whispered his loving warning about my season of loss that was coming. Suddenly, like a child I begged, I wanted to take it all back.

It was not God’s unkindness, but his love, his mercy, and his kindness that has given me this season of loss.

I’ve lamented on all the things I have lost here on this blog before. It has been a very hard four years now. It started with my best friend moving away, which spurred losing my tribe; all too scattered and too busy. Saying goodbye to the house I grew up in, the house that my parents lived in for over 50 years, that very much felt like losing a family member. Losing my dad to a heart attack. Losing my health which meant losing my ability to do many things…and some days it meant losing my ability to do ANY thing except ache in bed. Losing jobs meant losing my business, and a lot of money. Losing my independence and my autonomy. Having to give my children to God in a very real and scary way. Losing parts of my marriage that I thought I would always have. Losing purpose and value. In many ways, losing myself. Losing my mom now to what seems to be Alzheimer’s. Loss…loss…loss.

There has been much loss. There has been much surrender. There isn’t anything I can think of that I haven’t learned to let go of and give over to God.

But no matter what was taken, no matter what I surrendered and gave to God, I never lost my faith. In fact, I would say the loss of so many things has only made the room more empty, more space for God to fill.

I tell you all this in case like i did, you fear loss. In case the idea of loss makes you wonder if God really is a good God.

What I found in this season of loss is that God is better than I ever knew Him before. It is in the darkness that the light shines brightest. It is in the void that I have felt His love like never before. It is in the quiet and the dead of the night that I can hear Him speak loudest. As CS Lewis so eloquently said, “God whispers in our pleasure, speaks to us in conscious, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world”

But I have also learned that surrender is the real curse word. Very few Christians in my experience seem to say it. When I speak it out loud, the room goes silent. No word seems to offend more people, or at the very least make them back away from you, then the word “surrender”.

In our world we worship strength. We worship power. We worship health and wealth.

But God?

God keeps showing me how different His world is. Surrender might seem like a curse word to us, but to God? To God I am realizing it is everything. Surrendering shows trust. Surrender brings us into His arms like nothing else does. It is when we are surrendered that He can really use us.

The world sees us as weak, foolish, broken, uncomfortable. God sees us as surrendered.

Weak.

God uses the weak. Weak people rely on Him, instead of on themselves.

Foolish.

God uses the ones the world sees as foolish to convict the wise, because they listen to God’s words instead of their own opinions.

Broken.

God uses the broken, because they know how much they need Him.

Uncomfortable.

God helps us find uncomfortable so we can know him as our comforter.

God isn’t looking to make us in control, wealthy, powerful or comfortable…..he is looking to make us surrendered to HIM alone. Not because he is a control freak. No. It isn’t power or control he is seeking, that is us. It is because He is LOVE. He knows that if we truly surrender to him, trust him alone, we can begin to draw close to him and know him. And in drawing close to him, we draw close to LOVE. Unimaginable, unfathomable, unspeakable, unexplainable, LOVE. Love like we have never known or could ever know via a human.

How do I know? Because this has been last four years. I have felt it.

He is good. He takes so that we can know him more. He empties the room so that He can fill it. He is still a good God. All the time.