Since my surgery in January, and subsequent painfully slow recovery, I’ve received a lot of advice:
- Have a positive attitude
- Believe that you will heal
- Believe that this is all happening for a reason
- Pray
- Have faith in God
- Meditate
- Go to therapy
- Think about what lessons you’re learning from this experience
- Relax
- Get a massage
- Get acupuncture
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Stretch
- Be creative
- Visualize your recovery
- Have a sense of humor
- Watch funny TV shows
- Take this drug
- Don’t take that drug
- Take this natural remedy
- Don’t take that natural remedy
- Research causes and remedies
- Talk to experts
- Change your diet
- Take vitamins
- Drink more water
- Go to the doctor
- Don’t go to the doctor
- Get this test
- Don’t get that test
- Act like a healthy person
- Be patient. It takes a while to feel better.
- Try harder. You can get better faster.
Sadly, despite trying many of these things, I’m not really getting better. Sure, some things have healed from the original surgery, but new challenges continue to arise. I don’t feel well. Like myself. Whole. And when you don’t feel well it starts to affect other areas of your life until you have one big mess.
That’s where I am right now. In the middle of a mess that feels like it will never be cleaned up.
And I like cleaned up. I like tidy. I like fixed.
In fact, I love to clean up, tidy and fix things. When I was a kid, I used to go over to my friends’ houses and clean their rooms. Their mothers loved it, my friends, not so much.
Fixing things for myself and for others makes me feel in control, so to not be able to fix much of anything right now is a very, very uncomfortable feeling. So uncomfortable that I keep pushing aside a word that continues to come to mind because I have no idea how to do it: Surrender.
Stop fighting.
Stop resisting.
Give up control.
These are not concepts, at least in the States, that are thought of as positive. No movie heroine or hero lives happily ever after because they surrender. They win because they fight for their lover, or their work, or their passion, or their country, or their family, or their health.
Unfortunately, fighting isn’t really working for me right now. I think it’s time to surrender.
I usually try to write things here that I hope will help you on your Big Vision journey, but instead, I’m asking for your help:
Have you ever had an experience where surrender made your life easier?
If so, how in the world did you do it?
Thank you,
Britt
Photo by Manu Schwendener via Unsplash
