My best friend likes to tease and say my greatest talent is getting other people to do things for me. Ask my students, I keep them busy! They will inevitably rue the day I find them off-task as they soon will be completing a dozen managerial tasks for me. This week, as I have been praying Fr. Dolindo’s Surrender Novena, that is what I thought of every time I repeated the phrase, “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!” Take care of everything! It kind of made me feel like I was some high-powered celebrity barking orders at my personal assistant. Except the personal assistant at play is the creator of the universe and I am just one of billions of souls.
But seriously, how cool is that? What more could we ask for than our creator taking control of our biggest worries? Sounds fabulous in theory but we know that’s easier said than done. Why? Because although we may trust in God’s plan, we don’t trust that we will LIKE God’s plan. Every mother is going to worry about the safety of her child. What loving spouse wants to outlive their partner? No one wants to endure war, poverty, or disease. Frankly, all the above sounds awful, and as humans we can accept the reality that these things will happen, that is until they happen to us. That we cannot accept.
I am now eight years past the death of my first daughter. I will never “like” God’s plan for my life, but I have grown to respect and accept it. Without enduring the loss of my daughters, I would not be the person I am today. As corny as it may sound, I believe that when my daughters left this world to go to heaven it left a surplus of love in my heart. Love that so many of my students need. Love that puts us in each other’s lives as if we were pushed by some sort of celestial magnet. They need love. I need to give love. We complete each other.
As we have been learning about Fr. Ciszek this Lenten season on Hallow, the following quote has resonated with me.
“And the greatest grace God can give such a man is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers—and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith
I have never heard of anyone able to surrender to God’s plan who had not met their breaking point. Some may equate surrendering to giving up. I suppose it is in way as we are giving up control, but I think acceptance is a better word for it. When we surrender to God’s will we accept his will. Only then are we free to delegate our worries to Him. I believe that once we accept that we do not know better than God, the second half of our life begins.