The Blessings of Seasons of Surrender

As I prepare for this next chapter of my life, there's sort of this lingering feeling of being out of control, sort of like a man who is falling out of an airplane hoping desperately that (1) he remembered to pack his parachute that morning and (2) that parachute actually works. Fear isn't quite the the word that I would use, but there's has been more than one occasion during the past couple of weeks that I've paused and wondered, "Am I crazy? What am I doing? Maybe I'll wake up and revert to the same (relatively) predictable routine and trajectory of my life. Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll hit Control-Z and things will go back to normal and all the stress and anxiety associated with the unknown will fade away."

Of course, there's a couple of false assumptions there. First of all, it presupposes that my former routine would be maintained without major bumps or twists and that the trajectory of life would be largely predictable and mostly blissful and easy. Also, it assumes that the stress and anxiety is warranted - or put another way, I have good reason to be fraught with stress and anxiety because my vocational, spiritual and relational life is going to be a miserable crucible.

It also fails to recognize the fact that a life out of one's own control and in God's hands instead is a really good thing.

As I look back at the times of greatest transition in my life, it's impossible for me not to see that these periods - while difficult - have also been time where I've clung to the Lord most fervently, and thus these also double as the periods where I have arguably spiritually grown the most. These can be coined "seasons of surrender", when I've realized - like that man airborne - that I'm totally in God's hands of love and mercy.

One of these seasons was right after I graduated from college and moved to suburban New Jersey to start my new job at a management consulting firm. I remember feeling pretty alone, missing friendships from my college fellowship and trying hard to cultivate friends at my new church. The pace and culture of my new job was a bit of a culture shock, and between overaggressive partners and fellow analysts whose social lives consisted of getting drunk and getting laid, I questioned whether I fit in. But over time I found my niche at work and at church and more importantly, my relationship with God was strengthened by a period where God had shown Himself faithful and gracious. I had written something in a journal back then which has always been something that I've shared with Christians in college who are about the enter the "real" working world, and it's something along the lines of this: "When you leave the safe confines of your Christian fellowship at college and are thrown into a new environment where you no longer have support structures such as daily devotional events and prayer partners down the hall of your dorm, you'll quickly find out how much you leaned upon Christian fellowship as opposed to leaning upon Christ. They're not the same thing."

I think seasons of surrender allow us to see things as they really are. For example, even though I might have been under the impression that life was "easy" over the past three years, I'm likely to falsely interpret this as my own mastery over my life, as opposed to God's grace. Or put another way, the routine in my life made me prone to being arrogant and prideful about how smart, capable and self-sufficient I was. Of course, my "self-sufficiency" was just an illusion. Like a toddler who is flown through the air in his father's arms, the toddler is not actively flying any more I have been deftly navigating through my own life.

So here comes another one. I commit myself and my family to God's glory and perfect plan. It's going to be exciting in a scary sort of way. It's going to scary in an exciting sort of way. It'll be an adventure, and I'll look forward to the the pains, joys, and closeness with Jesus that comes along with it.