White flag

11 Jun White flag

It’s something that has been in my head-space for as long as I can remember but it’s finally, finally become a totally heart-space acceptance for me.  Some things are just not in my control.  Some things I will never understand in this life. They never were and they never will be. I’ve raised my white flag.  I surrender.

I can try with all my energy to keep a check on things, protect my children and move through each day according to my Outlook calendar, but the curve balls will come.  As will the tears and cuts and bruises.  As will the fear and heartache and worry. These things are not in my control. What is in my control is the choice to surrender all this to a purpose and plan that was in place long before I was even a thought.

It’s hard.  It’s so hard to let it go and believe that whatever happens is for a purpose we don’t understand. How can it be that my daughter was absolutely fine when she fell head first off the kitchen counter onto the tiled floor, when a little boy is lying in a hospital just up the highway in an induced coma from falling off the couch?   How can it be that a fire raged through an entire town, leaving only devastation, when at exactly the same time just a few hundred kilometers along the coast the biggest storm in thirty years poured down buckets of rain that could have put out the flames?  How can it be that every day there are innocent people who are tortured and brutally murdered?  We won’t know the answers in this lifetime and trying to figure them out in our own way won’t bring us the answers we want.

What I realize when I reflect on times of sadness or suffering or frustration, when I’ve so often asked ‘why is this happening?’, is that there was a learning and a good thing that came out of each one. Four days in the pediatric ward with my daughter meant four days of one on one bonding time for her and I. Six weeks on bed rest meant I was forced to take time out before my second child was born and to spend time with my son.   A death in the family meant us pulling together to support each other and celebrating our good times, year after year.

His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). I’ll now fully trust in that.