Tag: surrender

Clouds attaching to my story of sunshine: A lesson on detaching from the plan and surrendering to your Higher Power

Featured by stephsimply, posted in Simple Observations and Musings

“When things don’t go as you planned, don’t be let down. Make new plans. The sun doesn’t stop shining just because of dark clouds.”–unknown

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Who loves a good plan? 🙋‍♀️

Are you a planner?  I can be.  I love a good plan like a kid loves her teddy bear. I can say the same about a solid routine.  Various routines and/or plans give me structure, a scaffolding, to ensure I remember to do, find, and complete various short and long term tasks.  

Without plans and routines, I am a total right-brainer who just goes with the flow.  Free-styling is fine for many of my creative endeavors. Unfortunately, most of my creative endeavors bring little to no income to pay the bills.  However, I love my creative side.  It’s the joyful part of me.  Thus, creating structure and routine to my day, allows me to pay the bills and have fun too.

I will fully admit that I have different plans/routines for different compartments of my day/week, and I work hard to fit those various plans together into the patchwork quilt that is my life. Routines for my profession are obviously far more important and detailed than routines for household chores.  Nonetheless, no matter the plan’s level of so-called importance, if I create or find a plan that truly works, I prefer to stick to it, cling to it if I must . . . but . . .

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Uncooperative Plans 😩

Unfortunately, life isn’t always so cooperative.  It keeps flowing like a river reacting to the weather trends unphased by “Stephanie’s plan”.  Sometimes the river of life flows steady ‘round bends and curves.  Other times it is dried to a near trickle, and I wonder if the rains of inspiration will ever arrive.  Then there are those storms that wildly overflow the banks of life’s river sending its waters over rocky embankments and into uncharted territory.

As I sat at my writing desk this morning, contemplating how to begin writing, I spent time staring out the window.  Dawn’s light had broken upon clouds and fog. I could see peaks of brighter blue sky in between the gaps of the clouds overlaid with gauzy fog, and I realized that is often what happens to my plans.

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planned laughter 😆

I often joke that I must make God laugh all the time by saying that I have a plan.  Despite the fact that I know I need plans to organize myself and my hot-mess of a mind, I also know I cannot attach too tightly to those plans because God and life are going to do what they are going to do with me. And that is exactly what I am now experiencing.

One of my plans for 2024 is to run a spring half-marathon–the Virginia Beach Shamrock.  It is one I ran last March weeks before having a fairly major surgery in April.  Months later, in November, I ran the Marshall University Half-Marathon as a celebration of recovery from that surgery. 

My training plan for the MUM was long and protracted in order to allow my body to heal and recover from surgery.  After returning to work in May, I began gradually increasing my walking endurance throughout May and into June.  

Then, in July and August, I gradually added bouts of jogging into my walking. Gradually, the running sections increased as the walking sections decreased, but there was always permission to walk at any time, and even for the entire work out time, if needed. Due to careful planning, I was able to build up to running the entire half-marathon in November.

Therefore, I thought why not continue training through winter and once more run the VB Shamrock Half-marathon.  I had a plan.  It was mapped out from Thanksgiving week until March 17, the day of the half-marathon.  It was a beautiful and doable plan–not too hard–and fully manageable with my work schedule. 

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Who’s doing the Steering? 🛻

But as I said, I told God I had this plan, and He had a good ol’ belly laugh at it. I mean He must have enjoyed a real guffaw because very little of “my plan” has gone “as planned.” In fact, I have had to rework and adjust this plan so many times, I have finally, less than three weeks out, metaphorically thrown my hands in the air and surrendered because only Divine Providence knows what will happen on the day of the event. 

Therefore, as I sat at my desk staring at the clouds, the rising mist of the fog, and the interspersed glimpses of blue sky, I reflected on my so-called plan.  The plan included four days per week of running and/or walking, with one longer session per week, completed outside on the weekend, gradually increasing in distance. 

Most of the early weeks into the plan, I was able to complete four days, running outside (translated, not on a treadmill) at least two of those runs.  However, at some point after Christmas, I had to begin making adjustments.  Runs were missed due to conflicts in schedules, and numerous runs were completed inside of a gym on a treadmill due to inclement weather. Plus, I battled several colds and even a random ear infection, which is something I haven’t had since I was a child, so more running time was missed.

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Cloudy thinking 🤔

The thing about running, or any workout journey for that matter, is that it is a microcosm of life.  Lessons learned on the running (walking, hiking, lifting etc) trail are often tangible life lessons.  My plan was those fluffy white clouds in the sky that, in my mind’s eye, I could step comfortably from cloud A to cloud B and so on.  The morning fog, however, was the realities of life. Sometimes my planned path was clear, but most often, there was some sort of, metaphorically speaking, weather event occurring preventing a smooth transition from one step to the next.  

The cerulean sky, to continue the metaphor, was (and is) the Universe, the great I-AM, and that is to whom, in the end, I must surrender.  As Carrie Underwood once sang, I need to let go of the steering wheel because clearly I am not the one in charge despite my illusions of control.

By taking a step back, away from the great “Stephanie-said-so-plan,” I can gain a new perspective.  Firstly, I am grateful for overall good health. Sure, I have had a few minor illnesses this past winter, but nothing life threatening.  

Furthermore, perhaps all those challenges and obstacles were Divine Providence’s way of giving my body the rest I wasn’t giving it. Perhaps, I have been pushing too hard for too long.  Maybe some rest and recovery, like I gave myself after surgery, is what my body needed–especially as a more, ah-hem, older adult.

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Surrender 🙏

Similarly to the way I witnessed the morning surrendering the events of the coming day to the Creator, I too must surrender the events of the future.  What will be, will be.  End of story.  As my grandmother used to say as a preface, “Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” I will still have the opportunity to travel for a short trip to the shores of Virginia and live to tell another story.  And, where’s the joy in life without stories to tell and lessons to share?  

Surrender the plan

Surrender to the challenge and be liberated

Featured by stephsimply, posted in Simple Observations and Musings

“I’m noticing the difference between surrender and resignation.  One is a true letting go, the other is believing I am powerless.”–Andrea Scher

Balancing Act ⚖️

Like numerous other professions, my job in education brings with it unique challenges each year. It is not just the day-to-day, week-to-week dilemmas, but it’s the balancing act between the demands of work and the demands of life.  Additionally, like many jobs, the demands of work cannot be met within the confines of the scheduled work day.  While the work day may officially end at 3:30, there is no way to complete all the work within those hours. 

Thus, there is that predicament daily, and on weekends, of how to accommodate it all. Work and personal life demands are a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces don’t always fit together.  If I put a piece into the frame of work, then it seems to take away from the frame of personal life.  Inside my head there is an image of how it should all blend seamlessly into one harmonious picture, but the reality is often an abstract palette of discordant images.

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Solving the Puzzle of Time 🧩

How often do we feel the weight of: how to put the pieces together today?  One of the keys, I’ve discovered, to balancing work and life is to take it one day at a time. To be sure, that sounds cliché.  However, by focusing solely on one day, as part of the whole of the equation, it can often allow me to discern what must be done vs what needs to eventually be done.  Then it is a matter of focusing on one unfolding moment at a time.  If we can choose to surrender to the fact that we are facing challenges that cannot all be completed in one day, we can begin to let go of the attachment to “how it should be” and the picture-perfect image of “what it should look like.” 

  Attaching to that ideal image of “this is when and how it will be” is often the source of suffering and stress.  It is only human nature–especially in the current social media world in which we live–to visualize how “perfect” it will look/feel when we complete X, Y, and Z.  However, most of the time, at least in my experience, life tosses in some sort of unpredicted bollix, and suddenly that flawless finish is unattainable–as if it was ever possible to begin with! 

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The Strength of Surrender 💪

I have found that the notion of “surrender”is often associated with giving up, giving in, or acquiescing to a lower standard, but that is just our ego talking.  Furthermore, surrender is not a resignation either, which can sometimes lead to feelings of bitterness, anger, and resentment because you can’t “have it all” as popular culture and social media would have us believe. Instead, surrendering to the fact that you “can’t do it all” actually takes strength.

Nonetheless, choosing to ignore the mind’s ego can feel vulnerable and scary. It takes a real act of courage to surrender, and let go of our attachments. But, once we decide to release the ego’s messaging, we begin to allow ourselves to be led inwardly by a higher power, our True Source.

The water of this creek winds and bends over its rocky bed demonstrating the difference between ease and easy.

Ease into the challenges one by one 😌

Surrendering lightens our load and allows our day to flow with more ease and much less tension. That is not to say our day will suddenly become easy, there will still be challenges, but we can feel free from the binds of stress that come with ego-driven motivation. When we let go of the ego’s attachments, we are recognizing our true personal worth–we so much more than what we do.  

Ignoring our ego is an act of love and faith, not only in our abilities, but it is also a willingness to recognize that all those perfect images are just that–images, not the reality that social media often leads us to believe. Letting go of that attachment is an act of faith and a willingness to believe that we will be inwardly led by our intuition in harmony with our higher power.  

Surrendering gives us permission to let go of all those perfect images our ego attaches to.  We can begin to recognize that we are safe, despite the ego’s messaging that can falsely have us believing that, if we don’t achieve said-thing by said-time, we are failing.  Instead, surrendering says, we are trusting the way will be provided; and therefore, we can and will choose wisely.  Surrendering allows us the freedom to walk the path of life’s pavestone moments, step-by-step, stone-by-stone, knowing that when the time is right, all will come together as it should.

There are times of the year when even the trees quietly and gently let go of their colorful adornment, demonstrating the art of detaching from ego.

The ARt of Detaching 🍂

It’s about letting go of control. (We never had it to begin with anyway.)  It’s as simple as breathing.  Inhale. Exhale.  One moment at a time.  One step at a time.  One priority at a time. Trusting that just as each breath provides us with life, our path will ultimately be paved in its due time

The power of surrender is not weak as our ego leads us to believe.  Instead, it liberates us to stand in our strength by expelling all the tension, fear, anxiety, stress, and suffering attached to the ego’s. “This is how and when it should be.” It is the difference between closed fists trying to muscle their way through a situation, versus relaxed hands, flexibly handing each moment as it comes.

The energy of surrendering is only a breath away. Inhale energy for life’s next moment. Exhale, and release the tension attached to how it should be.  Surrendering to the moment can really be that easy. It is our ego that makes it so hard.  Inhale. Exhale. Surrender to your inner-knowing. The Breath of Life will provide.  

Surrender and Accept Change

Featured by stephsimply, posted in Simple Observations and Musings

“And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me, shine until tomorrow, let it be.”–Paul McCartney

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During the height of the pandemic, I cultivated the habit of a daily meditation practice.  In particular, I often used an app that was free of charge for those in the service careers, including educators.  In addition to offering guided meditations, it also offered short (3-5 minute) video clips designed to bolster spirits, inspire courage, and calm feelings of anxiousness.

While I can’t say I was a regular viewer of those videos, I did enjoy, and often learn, from the ones I did watch.  One video in particular, used time-lapse photography to demonstrate the ways in which light changes throughout the day.  It was one of my favorites, so much so, that I saved the link to my laptop to rewatch from time-to-time

During this video, the narrator explains the way our experience of color changes over the course of a day and the science behind it. Beyond the obvious point of light brightening at the beginning of the day and darkening at the end of the day, there is a daily light progression that we may not perceive.  It allows us to experience every color of the light spectrum within one 24 hour period.  Much of this progression has to do with the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere scattering the light waves coming from the sun and making the sky appear blue.

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At sunrise, we see more reds and oranges, while other colors, like greens, blues, and purples, appear darker and more muted.  Then, as the morning progresses, yellow light becomes the dominant color we tend to associate with sunlight. Meanwhile, the “yellow” sunlight reflected upon the so-called blue of the sky intensifies the color of anything that is green up until noon.  Then this same light/color progression begins to reverse itself throughout the remainder of the day until the sun sets.  As the sun returns to its lowest point on the horizon, the light returns to a red-orange hue, and then gradually fades into the blues and violets associated with night, illuminated by what we perceive as the white light of the moon. 

And so it is with life. Change happens daily, from moment to moment, and life never stays the same.  Like the changing of light rays throughout the day, many of these changes are so subtle, they are often not observed in the moment, such as the growth of our children, or our own aging process.  For example, a parent may not clearly see the day-to-day growth occurring within the physical development of their own child, until one day, they happen to notice the child’s clothes are suddenly too short/small.   Likewise, we may not discern our own aging process until we see a picture of ourself from as few as five years prior, and suddenly we are face-to-face with our own change.  

As an educator, I sometimes measure life in terms of an August to July school year, rather than the typical January to December calendar year, depending upon what is being measured.  Nonetheless, I recognize, now more than ever, that time is fluid, and it matters not how I measure time because it continues to flow and stream like the daily progression of light.

That being said, these past 12 months have been full of joys, changes, and of course, challenges. Many of these changes were immediately as visible as a bright sunrise over the Ohio River. While others shifts were less visible, but nonetheless impactful. Then there were those challenging dull hue moments that accompany the colors of night that felt as long as evening shadows.  In fact, there were moments when it felt like I was riding life’s carousel, returning, again and again, to the same point as if progress was at a standstill.

And yet, now I can look back and see that, indeed, even if I wasn’t directly observing it, change was occurring.  While my eyes may not directly witness every sunrise, nor catch sight of all of  night’s blues and violets, these events still occur–without or without my direct detection. An invisible force, a guiding hand, if you will, greater than you and I can comprehend, maintains this on-going, ever-moving cycle of change.  It is ever present, even during those darkest, bluest nights when we often feel alone with the shadow-side of life and wonder if the darkness will ever abate.  

Ultimately, the darkness ebbs, and the light does begin to flow, but precisely as the light/colors of the day must go through their unique progression, so too must the solutions and resolutions to those dark and lonely life challenges.  Life, like light, will go on and will continue, along with the Source, the maker of light and life.  Therefore, we must surrender to this knowledge.  Surrender to the what is, and to what will be; surrender to the notion that we are not in-control.

The lesson for me this 2022-2023 year, and it is a tough morsel to swallow, is that the only guarantee of life, like the light progression of our day, is change.  While I can try to control certain factors, such as schedule and routine, the choices I make, or even how I measure time, for the most part, what will be, will be. 

Thus, as long as I wake up, whether I rise with the cool dark blue of the predawn hours, or I get up with the bright orange and red light of sunrise, there is a Source shining, not only within me, but throughout all of life.  Therefore, as the light surrenders, rather than falls, to its daily course of change, it is likewise my job to see the illuminated gift of each day as I ride the ups and downs of this carousel called life.  

Aging with Serenity

by stephsimply, posted in Simple Observations and Musings

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”–Serenity Prayer

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After writing humorously about the aging process a few weeks ago, I ran across an article written by Paula Span, focusing on the research and work of Becca Levy, a psychologist, epidemiologist, and professor at the Yale School of Public Health. Part of Levy’s work specifically points to 7.5 years that can be added or subtracted from a person’s life based upon personal and societal attitudes towards aging.  Since then, my brain has picked up Levy’s thesis, as if it were an object of study, and has been manipulating it from all angles as I consider its premise with what I thought I knew and what I hope to understand/apply. 

And what do I know? I know that I definitely won’t be retiring during my 50s as I once believed. At one time, I harbored some resentment about this.  Then, we went through the pandemic, and I experienced the heat of transformation with millions of other people, like sand particles melting into glass.

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It was during the pandemic that I slowly began to observe many of my attachments to “how things should be,” such as my retirement age, and I began to undergo a practice of  learning to say “yes” more often to things that weren’t, “how they should be.”  It was, and continues to be, a very imperfect practice.  Learning to accept AND surrender to the things that I cannot change is NOT my natural inclination.  

In addition to my belief about retirement age, nearly ten years ago–I battled low back pain due to three bulging discs and an extra vertebra.  Without belaboring the topic, the pain led me down a meandering path of chiropractic care, regular epidural steroid injections, and ultimately two 12-week rounds of physical therapy.  Both well-meaning doctors and physical therapists, told me that I should never participate in any form of high intensity exercise, including running again.  I accepted this theory because, after all, they were the professionals, and besides I was getting to “that age”–whatever that means.  

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Fortunately, one physical therapist disagreed, suggesting that I should strengthen the weak muscles that were causing imbalances that led to my injury in the first place.  Then, if I continued to work on maintaining that strength and listen to my body, he believed that I could gradually resume running and other forms of exercise I had been told to avoid. His advice later proved to be spot-on.

Therefore, as the pandemic continued, work changed, living conditions changed, and exercise changed as we said goodbye to gyms and group exercise.  Work meant sitting for hours. Low back, hip pain, depression, and sleep disruption escalated. I learned that I was not made to sit for long periods, and I began to realize that in-person work was more beneficial to my life than I realized. 

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Through trial and error during the pandemic, I began to resume various forms of exercise that I had once abandoned, including running, and I began to rethink my belief system about my own aging process.  I started approaching my life, and my physical body, with a bit more curiosity–making observations, asking questions, forming hypotheses, testing them, and making adjustments. This continues today.

The pandemic forced me to make peace with the fact that I will work longer than I had originally planned because it is still beneficial for me. Furthermore, I have embraced my need for movement; I cannot sit for hours, and even if I could, it is NOT good for me physically or mentally.  Additionally, I need interaction with others, even if I am an introvert at heart.  However, I still value and honor my need for downtime, introspection, reflection, and quiet. 

Span’s article, combined with the pandemic experience, inspires me to seek the courage in the coming years to continue to change what I can, but to also hone my ability to know when I can’t.  This is only possible through the wisdom that comes with life experience, aka, aging.  Aging is not a point for which to attach shame, negative stereotyping, or embarrassment.  Instead, the process of aging should celebrate one’s life experiences and provide us with opportunities to not only apply the knowledge gained from these experiences to our own lives, but to also use them for the benefit of those with whom we interact and/or mentor.

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To be certain, aging brings unavoidable changes in the physical body and in the way in which we think (and forget), but it is not necessarily a time for stopping, like much of our cultural cues teach us by celebrating youthful beauty, prowess, and achievement. In fact, after reading about Levy’s work, I realize there’s plenty of money to be made.  In fact, according to Span’s article, Dr. Levy and her colleagues estimate that “age discrimination, negative age stereotypes, and negative self-perceptions of aging lead to $63 billion in excess annual spending on common health conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and injuries,” not to mention all of the money made from products promising to turn back the clock. 

One of the most compelling examples of psychological absorption and damage of cultural ageism in Span’s article occurred when Levy took her 70-something grandmother shopping in a Florida grocery store and her grandmother fell over a crate left in an aisle. The grandmother’s injury was superficial, but it did bleed profusely.  When the grandmother suggested to the store owner that crates should not be left in an aisle, the store owner replied that “old people fall all the time, and maybe they shouldn’t be walking around.”  After that point, Levy observed that her once lively grandmother began to ask others to do tasks for her that she once regularly completed.  It was as if her grandmother began to subconsciously view the grocery store incident as her cue that she was old and incapable of caring for herself.

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Meanwhile, in Blue Zone parts of the world, geographical locations in which people live the longest and are the healthiest, centenarians are celebrated as if they were highly acclaimed celebrities.  If these parts of the world can encourage, foster, and honor a culture where aging is not only accepted, but highly valued, why can’t we?  

Maybe I cannot change the current culture, but I can change my own personal view on the maturing process.  Wrinkles capture the adventures in the sun as well as countless moments of smiling. Gray hair celebrates the continuation of our inner child wanting to roam free and wild, and body aches/pains are a reminder to care for the vessel God gave us. 

I now know that phrases such as, “that age,” reflect cultural and social programmed attitudes that marketers, business, and the healthcare industry prefer is an ingrained part of our vocabulary.  While not every business or healthcare provider is personally invested in this ageism, I no longer desire to accept those marketers’ money-making, psychological damaging propaganda. What about you?

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