Surrender

Life, as usual, has been moving forward with great speed.  These past weeks we have been adjusting to our "new" routines of school, and being home with Miss B during the day.  The adjustment is going well (very well in fact).  There is such a sense of PEACE I have these days (that I have not experienced in so long).  And yet, sometimes it doesn't all make sense to me, but I am more relaxed than I have been in several years.  I wish I could have told myself 3 months ago to SURRENDER and LET IT GO.... but everyone always says that hindsight is 20/20.  So true.

I feel a FREEDOM I haven't felt in a LONG time.  For the first time, since I can remember I am taking care of myself.  I am going to the gym, riding my new bike, swimming lessons with the kids, taking supplements and drinking lots of water.  Bella and I go to the library play group and I have time for a project or two.  The house is cleaner, the laundry is mostly done and the dishes are not overflowing in the sink.  I have had time to read a book, go out to lunch with my husband and just breathe.

This new FREEDOM hasn't come without letting some things go.  AND some of those things were DIFFICULT to let go of.... I had to come to a place of SURRENDER.  I think a light switch went off for me somewhere between the CAT scan and being pumped full of Benadryl (after I had the allergic reaction).  I realized many things that day, but one of them was how badly STRESS was effecting my health and life.  After a DIFFICULT conversation with my doctor, it was time to face the music.  I had to start investing in myself and STOP putting my needs last.  I know...but that is how it just is for moms.  We put our children first and ourselves last (if at all).  This past 18 months, since Bella was born, I have been going at full force trying to make sure that everything was good for everyone....well, everyone except myself.  After not sleeping for 5 months (after B was born), trying to do everything myself, nearly having a breakdown, all of Luke's new health issues that came up, change in schools, change in jobs, a tonsillectomy for myself and now all this new health stuff, it has been a difficult year.  Add to that the stress of not having a job and feeling an incredible amount of guilt for not having one and that is a recipe for disaster.

So...I decided it was time to SURRENDER...to let go of the things of ME (no job, stress, no private school for the kids, Luke's health issues, Mark having to work a new schedule, guilt, guilt and more guilt).  Instead...I would get up every morning and walk in the direction of my new goals, my new role, and the blessings that lay before me).  I pray over Luke and Grace each morning, always thanking the Lord for their AWESOME teachers.  I put them on the bus (which stops in front of our house).  I give thanks to God for the money we are saving in gas.  When I kiss Bella everyday, I quietly thank God for the opportunity I have to spend time one-on-one with her.  To pour into her life.  To discover the beauty in the simplicity of the world through the eyes of a toddler.  Where the  "Ooooo's" and the "Wow's" of life are bubbles, books and swinging.  I am blessed to be reconnected with my youth pastor, Luke Gillock, from whom our son is named, who has taken time (once again) to pour into my life some spiritual things, nutritional things, and health things that I NEEDED to hear.  Luke is the owner and trainer at the gym he owns in Portland called ReInvent.

Even though we still have NO answers for what is going on with my son's EYES.  I too have SURRENDERED the outcome, process and have ACCEPTED the fact that we might never know what is wrong with them.  With another specialist coming into our future (well and old specialist revisited), we will once again walk one foot in front of the other on this path called "Luke's Incredible Journey."

God continues to be so incredibly FAITHFUL to me.  And all HE asks is that I just SURRENDER.

I am reminded of this song,
It's time for healing time to move on
It's time to fix what's been broken too long
Time make right what has been wrong
It's time to find my way to where I belongThere's a wave that's crashing over me 
All I can do is surrender

Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Revaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender...
To...
Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something heavenly


Time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I've wanted to say for so many years
Time to to release all my held back tears