Surrender

I have been thinking a lot about surrender lately. It seems at least once a week I am surrendering a desire, a hope, some selfish and some not selfish. Today I performed more poorly on an exam than I ever have in my life. I have a deep sense of sadness—partly because it means I do not know the material, but more because I am a perfectionist and take selfish pride in my usual academic successes. Tomorrow I have to have a meeting with my instructor to talk about my test. I feel shame for failing and remorse for not having studied more and more effectively.

My perfectionist tendencies cause me to want to do everything just so, which results in my spending three or four times the amount of time on a project than my classmates spend. I know perfectionism is not a God honoring thing, but doing things with excellence and with the best of my ability is—right? Those things seem impossible for me to separate in my day to day life. Maybe the difference is in my attitude when I do not excel. Today my attitude is very poor—but I believe that comes from my knowledge that had I fewer social engagements over the past week and spent that time studying—I could have done much better. Oh, and of course there is the pride thing, I am not longer at the top of the class…

I just finished a jog, attempting to clear the sadness from my emotions and the birthday brownies from my body. It just so happened that two of the songs while jogging that came through the list on my mp3 player had to do with surrender to God.

I wish that when I surrendered my desires to God that that was the end of it. Today I am surrendering my pride over my academics. Tomorrow maybe I’ll again need to surrender my desire for a Godly husband, my perfectionism, my selfishness with my time, my laziness when it comes to cleaning house, my materialism, my desire for my families emotional scars to be healed, my envy over the body type of my friends, etc. I wish getting to that place of surrender was infinitely effective--That it could just take place once for each issue, and then I would not ever again pick up that attitude, that selfish action, that sin, etc. Instead, I find my self laying things down, over and over.

When I force myself to look outside myself (a task that is more challenging today than normal) I realize that my exam today is teeny tiny in the grand scheme of things.

Tomorrow I leave for my pediatric rotation at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. There I will be working with families who are fighting for the very lives of their children. In two years I will be living in Africa where millions are fighting for their lives.

I seriously need to get over myself. : )