Serenity Prayer Part Seven

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy in the next...

Surrender...that word makes me shudder and sends chills down my spine.
Surrender...to accept that I can't just pull myself up by my bootstraps, which are broken.
Surrender...that I am not as in charge, competent, capable as I try to show everyone.
Surrender...the word feels like defeat.

But surrender is also freedom from and for another way.
Freedom from pretending.
Freedom from all the expectations of self and others I don't clear.
Freedom from individualistic understandings.
Freedom for honesty...that there moments I am a bonehead and moments I bless.
Freedom for God's wisdom and will for my life rather than the voices clamoring to define me.
Freedom for community.

What if the church was less a place of certainty and creeds and more a place of sacred surrender to One who can truly be trusted which such a vulnerable posture?
What if the church was a place to practice:
admitting what we cannot change aloud;
accepting the challenge to do what we can, where we can;
acknowledging we need help sorting all that out.
What if the church was a place to practice:
Being here in the moment,
Naming our pains, processing our moments of making mistakes,
Laughing joyfully that God is there in all of it?

In that moment, the church might do more than speak the words of this prayer,
We might actually start living, leaning into them with hearts, minds, souls wide open.

So may it be,
That these words create space and a place and an invitation to be free from what "should" be and free us for what "could" be in the presence and promise of God.

Grace and peace ~~