Surrender the stuffy

Sadie sleeps with her arms over her head, always has, but she doesn’t start that way. During the dreadful nighttime routine she chooses lots of positions before finally surrendering to the arms over the head. The most common is the stuffy cling. She grabs a stuffy and clinches her eyes closed quite literally willing herself to sleep. I know this will not work and when I finally see an arm go up, I know we’re almost there. And then my mama brain quietly says hallelujah and spends like 30 minutes trolling the Facebook...how many mamas get me??

I was thinking about this tonight and how it relates so well to our spiritual lives. 

Literally speaking, think about a time in worship when you were clinching the back of the pew and you finally surrender, hands over your head shouting praises to the Lord. Now, I’m a good southern baptist, so it’s a rarity in our regular worship services...But put some of us Jesus jumpers in a conference center at a women’s event and hands are flying..😂 Seriously though, that moment of surrender to all outside thoughts and fully worshipping God. It’s beautiful. There’s peace. 

Metaphorically speaking, what does full surrender look like? When we throw up our hands in worldly defeat, after we have tried our best to do it ourselves, hands in the air, please God help me with this mess, surrender. Until we get there, because we are all a little stubborn, what is our stuffy? What are we clinging to with our eyes clinched that keeps us from experiencing Gods fullness? Is our stuffy fear, anxiety, insecurity, sin, relationships, comfort, desire for perfection, guilt, anger, control? I can claim lots of those as I’m sure most of us can. 

I went through a phase in middle school where each day I would grade myself on how perfect I had been. I literally had categories and wrote down a grading system. I wanted to be perfect at every single aspect I was approached with each day. My desire to be perfect, my “grading system”, only left me with big insecurities that I wrestle with even today. Insecurities that if I had given them to God, would have had a far lesser impact on my decisions. There was a time in high school that I made the statement to an older member of our church, after making a few consistent bad choices,  “if I can’t be a perfect Christian, why try”. My fear of disappointing God was causing me to miss the fullness of His grace. 

Each situation in my life has presented its own stuffy, some reoccurring. In my adult life, through grief and disappointment, and more recently cancer and pregnancy, fear and anxiety have outweighed faith some days. I don’t walk in fear, because I know I don’t walk alone, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally grab that stuffy back.  But y’all, when I drop the stuffy and that full surrender happens, perspectives shift and peace becomes so rich. When God changes your perspective from “I’m so afraid of what’s in front of me” to “I am grateful that I’m on this journey with God”, it’s a game changer. We can never see what is coming around the corner, but we can be sure God sees it and we can be sure God knows what stuffy we are going to grab! 

#dropthestuffy #surrender