The Dream

There’s something about surrender that I still fumble around with and can’t get right: What is it about letting go that we all struggle with? When you are born you are forced into a life of total dependency. If you grow up in a fairly good home then for the next 15 to 20 years you live a life that is somewhat sheltered from the real realities of life. You have ’something’ to fall back on like, of course, your family (note that I am simply generalising here). I don’t know when it hit you, but the ‘real’ realities began to strike me like a set of waves around the age of 22 and they haven’t stopped since. As I wrestled with myself and with God I found it easy to say that I trusted; easy to say that I had some sort of faith, but my actions said otherwise. I remember that for about a year I lived with a physical pain in my chest that would rise and fall in severity according to my worries and hurting (I certainly don’t say this to arise in you some pity for me. I say this so you can see how easily the mind can effect even the body but most importantly how the mind and body can effect the spirit as it’s the part of us that connects to His spirit) It was then that I began to realize that maybe, just maybe, all that I had set hopes on were nothing but a vapor, a fantasy. What I used to anticipate with great excitement was slowly turning into a big joke. During this time there was nothing and no-one that I could fall back on. Hearing my pastor preach on beautiful truths only went so far, the comfort of my parents and family only went so deep, but my heart was not healed. In all of this the most horrid thing that could have happened, the most regretful thing I wish I had done different because it would have saved me many tears, was to question and put the blame on God Himself. I thought that what I asked for in my prayers was something He would naturally give because they were ‘good’. In my mind I reasoned: if God is good then good things will come to His children. And once again, although this is true, you and I both know that the good we want does not always turn out ‘good’, does it? What had I done to now be walking alone with no plan for my life, not even dreams? Where was the God that provided a path of security, a path of purpose? I took it even further and questioned his very existence because I reasoned that if He could not control Goodness or Goodwill toward man that maybe He wasn’t in control at all. Maybe this ‘god’ idea was merely a way to make ourselves feel better about a rotten situation. Such were the thoughts of a girl whose heart was torn by a now dreamless life but could not throw questions at God and not have Him answer them (in a strange way). I know He’s there. Otherwise how would I recognize goodness? He must be Good because those ‘waves’ that came upon me were thrown by Him. How does that make him good, you say? I certainly didn’t see this coming. But his answer was clear. It took me almost going under, feeling pain, wrestling and struggling with my faith to finally see what I was resting my entire life on: the dreams, the expectations, the picture I had painted of God, of myself and of this life. So, I felt much like Eustace who, tired of what he had set his hopes on, was ready for Aslan to cut through his scaly dragon skin and find the little boy at the core. All that I had attained, picked up and stored as treasure had become who I was and they were weighing me down. What I had rested my hopes and dreams on was faulty and would have pulled me under had it not been for the realization that even being surrendered to ‘good things’ is not enough to truly live. He is the life. He IS Love. HE is ‘Goodness’ . Like a seed who is totally and unapologetically surrendered to the key elements, so, He had to strip me of these dreams so I could totally surrendered to ‘The Dream’. Himself. The true life worth living, real love and the very source of goodness. Can I express what that dream is? No. I think I’ll spend eternity trying to though.