Your Life Is (Mostly) Yours

thoughts on surrender & acceptance

I was tidying up my living room this morning and noticed the (sometimes absolutely overwhelming) presence of my kids’ stuff— baseball cards, LEGO creations, nerf darts, fantasy chapter books, more baseball memorabilia, arts and crafts supplies—scattered across every surface of the place.

I picked up two well-worn baseballs and a bobble-head figure, and instead of putting them by the stairs to be taken to a bedroom later in the day, I placed them in a different part of the living room, realizing how much I cherish those weathered baseballs, the glove that goes with them, the stacks of cards, the LEGO creations.

My kids’ lives have become my life in the very best and sometimes messiest ways, and they constantly hold a mirror up to my own messes with tenderness.

Photo by Wendy Scofield on Unsplash

I love reading home decorating books. I love home decorating magazines, and I’m especially drawn to them as the seasons change, as I’m looking around and asking what I can tweak here and there, what can be rearranged to bring a fresh perspective.

I have my own particular style of eclectic decorating, which feels like vignettes, or, for a better choice of words at least for me, altars of special items all over the place. Maybe, at the end of the day, I’ve modeled this for the kids for better and for worse—to collect items that mean something, to gather pictures and books (and more books!) and rocks and seashells and let them take up sacred space.

Travis has traveled to many parts of the world and brings things home to us—magnets and books, bracelets and rocks that hold memory.

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking a lot about surrender and acceptance for the past several months.

If you’re like me and you grew up with any sort of trauma or chaos in childhood, it makes sense that as adults we would cherish control, cherish knowing what comes next and how we can be prepared for anything, always.

The irony is that life is best lived with a dance between control and surrender. We actually let go to feel more alive. We let go in order to let in the things that matter.

We let go to realize that our lives are mostly ours, but not completely. We hold space for the mystical, the magical, the sacred to seep in and create space, too. We let go of preconceived notions and beliefs. We let go of our own identities and boxes, too.

I’d never choose to scatter my home with baseball cards and craft supplies, but they’ve become a part of me, and I’m learning to surrender to them.

Recently I was walking a labyrinth at my friend Terry’s home in the North of Ireland. He’d carved a sacred space in his garden, a loop of time, but beyond time. I journeyed back and forth, from the “beginning” of the loop to the “end” of it, walking until something emerged in me.

It takes me a while to unfurl, to loosen. Control can be rooted in anxious feelings and over-preparation, making sure the spiritual moments happen but that we aren’t too thrown off by them.

As I walked for at least ten minutes in the spiral, I found my way to a steady rhythm. Then I noticed Grandfather Sun, so I turned to stand in his presence, to say good morning and whisper a word of thanks. I’d unfurled a bit, but I was still holding on, unsure.

Then I heard that deep whisper, the kind that we call God or Spirit or an Ancestor or Kche Mnedo, that tender voice that shows up when you want it to but think it won’t:

But will you let me love you?

This, for me, is at the heart of things, and I hadn’t known it until recently. It is one thing to love. It is another thing to admit that we’d like to be loved. It is fully another thing to allow ourselves to be fully loved.

And when we’ve been abandoned before by parents or partners or someone we love, we begin a quiet narrative that maybe we’re not meant to be fully loved. Maybe we don’t know how to be.

This is where surrender shows up once again. This is where we think we’ve decorated our home one way and realize that other streaks of magic have seeped in, ones that annoy us sometimes, that might cause a mess, but make everything soaked with color and meaning and intention.

We think our life is ours, until we realize it’s only mostly ours.

We think we are loved until we realize we want to be loved more.

We think we know surrender until we learn to really unfurl ourselves so that we can fully, wholly, face the sun.

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

---

Upcoming Events!

June 10th 7pm How To Resist In Our Personal Lives

Register Here

June 25th 7pm Practicing Resistance in Community

Register here!