Destruction and Surrender
Contextual Understanding: This is a Morning Musing written about an experience we had years ago when we left a beautiful ministry to which we were fully committed. Today, I realize everyone is doing their best and a sense of release and peace resides, along with prayers for everyones’ wellbeing.
In our third year, after a year of focus groups and planning, it was decided some changes would bring benefit to the community. At that time a very small minority resisted these changes and created dissension which resulted in our departure.
This post shares some of the process of walking through the challenge of this change and the depth of surrender it provided. Hopefully, the reader can relate and find support as they move through challenging and changing times. It is also hoped that this story is an example of surrendering to a Higher Power and the goodness that this brings (read the next few posts).
At the conclusion of the post are prayer support options as well as helpful insights from Dr. David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD renowned psychiatrist on how to handle crises.
Life-Altering Change
Tension. Emotion. Feeling my humanity. Not sleeping, laying awake and spiritually practicing prayer and surrender. Thinking of our departure from a beloved ministry and all that it stirs up within me. I had to move the energy so I got on the elliptical machine. Congregants reaching out. Anger toward the few whose actions helped to create the conditions of chaos, creating the lack of “resonance” and undermining our efforts leaving disappointment and heartbreak.
Where to go from here?
It makes me wonder, “Jesus how did you forgive even as they crucified you?” Help me to be free of this kink in my life. The kink of the pain. It was like a plane crash, my own personal Twin Towers falling to what seems like no fault of my own. Standing in the rubble of destruction. How could this happen after I’ve worked so hard? I gave everything I had, to the absolute best of my ability. Where do I go from here? How do I believe in who I am if giving everything I had wasn’t enough?
Surrendering
God help me. Please. I do not know.
There are so many circumstances beyond my control. It seems those who want to fly planes into towers get to do so with many lives affected. Rubble left over where there was once dedication, devotion, commitment, attempts at connection and collaboration. Now only rubble. Call in the trucks to haul it off and burn the blueprint of the building’s construction. It didn’t pass muster of planes being driven into them. How could the architect know that it would be needed? My heart opened wide, willing, committed, trying, striving, wanting to do my best, attempting to do my best, and in the end to no avail.
God, help me. Help me to stand in the rubble, and find belief in mySelf, and trust in the Ultimate architect. Help me find the capacity to forgive for they know not what they do, which includes myself.
What Happened in Jesus’ Crucifixion and Burial?
Mary wept as she looked for Jesus at the tomb, wanting to consecrate her teacher’s body. Yet no body was found. Mary wept, confused, feeling a deep sense of loss and pain. Yet he was alive.
Somehow, in the mix of crucifixion and burial something more, something beyond logic happened. Something unforeseen by those who elected to “crucify him,” something so powerful that even physical death could not overcome, political death could not overcome, or worldly failure did not overcome. Something that pain, conspiring, orchestrating, organizing, deposing, betraying, suffering, beating, belittling, bleeding could not foresee or have the ability to overcome. Jesus overcame the depth of despair and destruction to demonstrate one can get through anything and be fully alive.
Where is the resurrection? Where does Christ say to me, “Kristen.” When do my eyes stop dropping tears and turn to hear the voice of my teacher?
God help me. I feel lost, as lost as Mary must have felt the day she went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. I search for what remains here in my life. Send me an angel to help me find my master, my teacher, my teaching. Help me sort through the rubble of my livelihood. Is there a resurrection possible here?
What gets us through the pain to a new day, a new way?
Taking it step by step, remaining still when needed, cloistering with others and feeling the grief, taking it day by day, doing the next right thing. Anointing the dead when it can be done. But don’t be surprised if you don’t find the body (that which has died in the crisis, what the ego was attached to), somehow it has disappeared in the destruction process. Let it go.
Roll the stone of pain away Lord. I, of my own, cannot. Truly, into Your Hands I commit my spirit, life, career (the capacity for this one), all that I’ve known as me. Here is my time on earth, here is the action and way in which I focus my time and energy here in this time and space. I do not know your Divine Plan. Be the Architect of who I am, how I live, what I focus my time on, give me this day my daily needs, help me to want only your Will and to align with that totally. I surrender all, even to the point of death at every level of my existence. Show me the way, the next right steps, open the tomb of the pain of mourning. What miracle can happen here in the darkness of this destruction? Into Your Hands I surrender this soul, this life, this will, the work of this one. Illumine the way. Amen.
If you are needing prayer support for a crisis: Share prayers with Revs Brian and Kristen at AwakenMe.Us.
Need immediate prayer support? Silent Unity has been praying with others for over 125 years 24/7/365. You can reach them at:
English toll-free prayer line: 1-816-969-2000
Spanish toll-free prayer line: 1-816-969-2020
International: 01-816-969-2000
Dr. David Hawkins shares wisdom in Healing and Recovery, Chapter 8 “Handling Major Crisis.” Below are powerful coaching excerpts on how to heal from a crisis.
Facing Crisis:
“Spiritual work is pictured as studying a textbook, looking at a picture of a guru, and singing songs. Then an acute catastrophe occurs, and the spiritual work is bypassed.… We do not see that the spiritual work brings up these acute crises, … and that they are an opportunity. This is where the spiritual work is happening. The other was preparation, gathering of information and experience, deciding on direction, and accumulating spiritual knowledge…. These [crises] are the golden opportunities that are priceless if we see them that way, if we are willing to be with them and say, ‘Okay.” The willingness to go with them, no matter how painful it may be, enables a giant leap in consciousness, a real advance in wisdom, knowledge, and awareness. That which we read about in the books then becomes our own inner experience.” pages 249-250
“The desire to change what occurred and how we feel about it have to be surrendered…. no matter what the nature is, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, separation, an acute emergency, or a catastrophic injury. All bring about the state of shock that is the same, no matter what is the precipitating event. The shock is the sudden realization of our powerlessness, the fact that the will has met a brick wall, that we are stoppable and have been stopped, and that the personal will cannot have its way. Therefore, the shock and realization of all this is the same in all the experiences, along with the fact that it is unchangeable and permanent.” pages 251-252
How to Handle the Crisis:
“It is surprising that the only thing to be handled in these acute catastrophic events is the energy of the emotions themselves. If we look at the experience, we see it is not the event that happened or we think happened in the world that is the problem but the way we feel about it…. We do not really have to handle the emotions, just the energy of the emotions.” pages 234-235
“The mind will try to figure out ways to escape the emotional energy as though that will reduce the pain; however, the pain actually comes from resisting the experience. To handle this, one just sits down and lets go of resisting it, choosing instead to be with it. The faster one opens it up, the faster the energy is let out, and the quicker the experience will be over.” page 239
Praying in Crisis:
“To be effective, one pays little attention to the mind because the mind really has no solution to the problem…. This is where people’s experiences with prayer often come in…. At this point, the prayer might be, ‘Please be with me; show me how to surrender and handle this experience,’ and ask for conscious awareness of the Presence of God.” page 247
“There is something below the emotionality that is experiencing this energy out for a person. It is literally being handled by something far greater than one’s personal self. If only the small personal self were present, one would be totally swamped and obliterated by the energy released during these experiences. One survives the experiences because there is something greater than the personal self that is more than capable of handling them.” page 250-251
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