When We Surrender, We Win!

It may be a paradox, but when we surrender, we win.

A man stands at the edge of a cliff, ready to give up on life. Right as he begins to leap, a giant hand suddenly reaches out from the clouds and grabs his collar. The man begins to struggle with the giant hand, yelling, “let me go, let me go! I have nothing left! I GIVE UP!”
The hand continues to hold on. Until finally, the man gets so tired of fighting. He surrenders.

Often when I’m talking to someone about the Spiritual Principle of Surrender, I use the analogy of surrendering in a battle.

Imagine a destroyed city during a battle. There is no way to rebuild a city while still in the fight. It would be foolish to restore under the hazard of active artillery. No sooner do you repair the local food store, it gets hit again.

When we finally come to terms with the realization that the cost of continuing to fight is too great to deny the loss. When we get sick and tired of watching the devastation that surrounds us, we get to the point when it is more important to get right, then to be right. We Surrender.

Once we surrender, the battle stops, and we can begin to assess the damage.

We allow help to come in Red Cross, neighboring or allied partners, whoever is there ready and willing to help us pull together. We begin to unite with others who have gone through similar battles. And we begin to rebuild.

The Spiritual Principle of Surrender is not about “giving up.”

It is about letting go of what we find that we are powerless over. We are surrendering all the energy we are waisting on the concerns, the fears, the actions of others that we have no control over.

When we Surrender our efforts to change those around us, those around us will change. Click To Tweet

Instead, we turn our focus, our energy to what we do control. We look at the available resources. We share openly about what we are doing, what we feel, and what we need. And we let go of the frivolous battles with others.

My son Zachary said it best.

When his little sisters were complaining about being “Sheltered in Place” and not being able to see their friends. We overheard him tell them, “We all have a choice coming out of all this. We can either come out of this a better version or a worse version of ourselves.”

“Always aspire to inspire, before we expire.”