Recently, I posted a comment about having had enough of the intensely hot and dry days we’ve been having for days on end in Texas and my friend Bob responded with, “I mean, there’s surrender and then there’s surrender”!!!!  And yet, I see the cardinals and other birds outside my window making the most of the precious water that I try to fill up some old dog bowls with so that they can drink and bathe.  I watched one bird this afternoon jump right into the middle of the smallest water bowl and swim back and forth and flutter her wings constantly—if birds could purr then this one was surely purring. Several of the little trees that David planted over the last two years are bright green from our frequent watering and somehow bearing the weight of the ferocious 107 degree heat.

I’ve experienced various forms of surrender in my life from surrendering to the fact that my parents were indeed getting a divorce and then surrendering to the fact that they would never get back together again.  Then there was the surrender and acceptance to the understanding that I process alcoholic refreshments and sugary foods much different than the average bear.  In all of these instances, surrender never came easy for me and acceptance only came after I was able to remove my last pinky finger muscle of control from whatever I did not want to accept as reality.  I suppose in a way I have surrendered to the fact that we’re in a record breaking drought and heat wave and most of the time I can accept it and then do what I can–such as watering the plants and animals.  But sometimes I do get caught in the grip of retaliation at what???  There’s really not a person or a group that I can direct my anger about the drought and heat at unless I wanted to believe some of the conspiracies I’ve heard out there such as a government entity is controlling/messing around with our weather. Even then, I still would be powerless over such a group.  I can’t really direct my anger at the sun because it’s just hanging out there being the sun like it has for millions of years now (I’d be like a tiny ant shaking her fist up at a huge magnifying glass). So what I end up bucking up against is that invisible invincible wall of denial of what is really going on.  Sometimes it’s easier just to crash on over to the side of unreality than it is to accept what “is”

Then again, I know that it is in times like this when our faces our being smashed up into a sheer wall of an overbearing reality that some incredible inventions, discoveries and ideas are created. When it seems like there is no way out then someone figures a way out that no one had ever considered or seen.  So were those people able to do so because they first accepted the reality of what was and then were able to back away from it to see what could be done about it or did they not surrender and give up?  I believe that it was after surrender and acceptance that other options could be seen and considered because the energy moves from being a push push push push push against something that you don’t care to understand or deal with into an energy of flow.

What about you?  What have you surrendered to lately?

Surrender