Surrender.
Dear Friend,
I’ve been sitting with a lingering thought and in true HSP style, sometimes processing the thoughts, feelings and emotions (because none exist without the others) is easier done on paper/keypad. So bear with me as I try to articulate this the best way that I can. Grab a cuppa, this may take a minute….
Someone recently asked me for a solution to some big things that were happening in their life and the best advice I could give was to ‘surrender’. But then she asked me “what does that even mean?!” in an exasperated voice and that really threw me. I mean how could she not know how to surrender? How could she not understand? It is my absolute go to when I don’t have a simple solution to a problem…. you just surrender.
So then, once I got past the WTF moment, I realised something. As a highly sensitive person there are an enormous amount of times when the decision to surrender is not only the best option, but the only option. When your sensory world becomes too much or feelings become too much or just the simple too muchness of situations becomes too much, sometimes you have to lean into surrender. I realised in the midst of that conversation that surrender was not something that everyone had to practice and that blew my mind. For some people, surrender was not life giving. Surrender just wasnt even a thing. For me it is everything and it’s a constant practice that is life preserving. But lets take a moment here because we are sitting in authenticity and reality, and the truth is that exploring this subject has left me feeling a little uneasy…. is that the word? I’m not sure. Maybe its the simple realisation that there are people in the world who don’t have to rely on surrendering in the hope it will take them out of fight, flight freeze. Some people just don’t get activated in the same way by their sensitivity (80% of the population according to statistics) and my brain just really struggles to compute that. Maybe uneasy isn’t the right word. I mean, I love my sensitivity in all the beauty it brings but I guess there is a very small part of me that feels frustrated that I have to work my way down and out of big feelings, and others… well, they just don’t. That in itself takes a moment. A breath and a release.
*deep breath in, deep breath out……*
Okay my friend, lets look at surrender.
It is not an act of giving up, it is an act of faith. It is choosing faith over fear.
Faith in its truest form, without any religious connotation. It is simply the absolute, unwavering belief that everything is happening in the right space and time, often for reasons we don’t know or understand yet and that everything will work out for the highest good of all concerned.
To surrender and have faith means being able to let go. Let go of controlling the outcome and settling into trust. Trust in a higher power, in God, the Universe, in whatever you believe. Trust.
Faith and Trust = Surrender.
I have had to cultivate both faith and trust even when they have been hard to come by. Listen, I’ve got through a lot of hard stuff. A LOT. And when things are hard, faith and trust can be hard to come by, but you have to dig deep, lean in, ask for guidance, ask for a sign, I pray and ask for guidance and then I meditate and open myself to receive. I accept and welcome miracles but even then at times, I get challenged and my conscious mind tries to control everything in a bid to feel safe. And in those times I remind myself that even in the worst of times, I have survived, and not just survived but always grown through the lessons I received. Even when I come out the other side, hair frazzled, emotionally spent, mind frayed at the edges and look like I have been dragged out the wreckage, I survived.
Faith and Trust. Surrender. That’s it.
Take a breath, you’ve got this friend.
Love, Me xx
