Surrender

The room was packed. You could literally touch the person next to you we were so close. I could feel the heat from the air vents and bodies fill the room. I laid down on my yoga mat to prepare myself for the class. One thing I love about yoga is the mindfulness of the practice. I enjoy being reminded to focus on the tension I feel in my body then giving myself permission to release it. I had been experiencing a large amount of anxiety through out the week and I was ready to sweat the toxin's from my body. As I laid there in wait, a word came to me.

Surrender.

I've been reading about multiple people having a "word" for the year. You pick a word and that word is your goal for the year. You spend the whole year learning how to apply that particular word into your life.

I've read multiple post and blogs about people's "word" for the year. I've admired many words, thought about adopting a few for a myself. As each word brought a moment of inspiration into my moment, they never had enough 'stick' to them to stay with me. I'd eventually move on and be inspired by someone else's story.

The class hadn't even started yet. People were still talking amongst themselves. The instructor was working on moving people closer together to fit the last few who wanted to squeeze in at the last minute. The music hadn't started, I hadn't even noticed the clinching in my jaw when the word came rushing over me.

Surrender.

I'll never forget the moment I decided to be a counselor. I was 16 years old and I was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist office. I had just begun driving and I had brought my brother to the dentist. As I sat waiting for him to come out, a woman in the waiting room began to talk to me. She was probably in her early 30's. She started off with small talk but the next thing I knew she was telling me about her life. She began telling me about how her and her husband were going through a divorce. She had kids, younger than me at the time, and that's who she was concerned with the most. She was worried about them as they went through this difficult change. I remember just listening to her. I took in each word she said. I know I told her about what it was like for me having my parents divorce when I was younger and I remember telling her some things that my parents did to help make the transition easier. I'll never forget the relief I saw on her face afterwards and the pure gratitude in her voice when she said, "Thank you for listening."

I was only 16 at the time but I knew, I knew with everything in me that I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. I wanted to listen to people's problems and give them a glimpse of hope through it all. I realized that I had been doing this most of my life anyways. I've always joked saying I had a neon flashing sign over my head, encouraging people to tell me their life story. The sign has never bothered me. I love hearing people's stories, still.

I'll never forget that moment. I'll never forget because that moment set a goal for me. From that point on I was going to become a counselor and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to make it happen. I made plans for school. I chose my undergraduate degree solely based on being able to use it to get my masters degree. I remember walking into my school counseling office in high school and seeing a flier for Lee University's counseling program. I knew that when I finished my undergraduate degree that I would apply there for my masters degree. Sure enough, my last semester in undergraduate school, I applied into Lee and got accepted into their counseling program.

I had a few changes along the way, but ultimately I knew what I wanted and I worked to achieve it. 9 years later, after the 'ah ha' moment I had in the dentist office, I walked across a stage and received the degree I had worked so hard for.

I didn't realize, until now, how uncommon it is to have something like that happen. To be so assured in a dream that you work until it's accomplished. I had no idea that not all dreams come that easily and that not everything can be achieved with hard work.

I still love what I do. I wake up everyday wanting to go to work. I come home every night drained of all energy and then I wake up the next day ready to do it again. My dream is still real and I'm happy to live it each day.

But now the question that has been running through my mind since I walked across the stage, "What's next, Emily? What are we going to work for now?"

My name actually means, "industrious; hard working", and I live it to the fullest. Hard work has never scared me. Pouring energy and time into people or tasks has never once had me running for the hills. I'm a servant and doer at heart and it makes me happy to work for something, especially something good.

As I work to try to find something to work for, I've been coming up empty. As much as I love my job and being a counselor, I've learned that this is only a fraction of who I am. There is so much more to me that has been waiting for me to discover. I've learned this and have been trying more intentionally to take time to discover the other parts of myself. To dig deeper into this heart of mine and see what all has been neglected for years.

This hasn't been as easy as it sounds. Being the goal/ task oriented person that I am, I find myself looking for the next big drive, the next big motivation to have me rolling again. I keep searching for the next big dream that I can work on achieving. Through all the digging, I have yet to find anything that is worth building or focusing on as intently as I did when I was in school. I haven't had a new clear direction chiseled out before me as it once had for me in that dentist office.

This is why I have become anxious. The more I dig, the more I'm coming to find that planning and control are only an illusion. You cannot fully plan your life out. You can never truly control what will come. We live in a chaotic world, filled with surprises and we are only cheating ourselves when we choose to believe that we can some how control what comes, goes, and stays.

Surrender.

It came to me on a yoga mat. Surrender your planning, Emily. Surrender your control. They have only been an illusion this whole time anyway.

Surrender clung to my heart in that moment and all worries and anxieties fled. It wasn't even warm enough in the room to break a sweat and I already felt as if I had lost 10 pounds.

I'm choosing to surrender this year to a God who loves me and wants nothing but good things for me. I'm choosing to allow my year to be filled with all the surprises, the good and the bad ones. They are coming anyways, there is not enough planning, worrying, or control that can stop the inevitable.

Here's a year to learning to surrender and trusting that more joy and peace can be found in the midst of this chaotic life.

Street Lights

Two street lights shine in one of my windows in my room. I'm not a fan of these lights, for at night when I want my room to be pitch black, they always shine just enough light into my room to annoy me. I've put art canvas's into my window, blinds, and hung a thin curtain to help dim the orange lit street lights.

Tonight, for the first time since I moved into this home, I'm happy the street lights are there. I'm happy because without their light tonight I would not be able to see the little baby snow flakes begin to fall from the sky. I pull the thin white curtain back, I pull up the blinds, and I pull the canvas's from the window.

Snow flakes are so graceful. They are unlike rain that races as fast as they can from the sky. Snow flakes take their time. They dance with the air, floating gracefully to the ground, knowing that once they hit everything could change.

There is something hopeful when you see snow. Living in the south when the temperature's change in the blink of an eye, snow can feel near impossible. You begin to believe that it's never coming, that the talk of snow, the blue on the radar, are only a tease. You begin to believe that soon enough, the clouds will pass, without a speck of a snow flake, and you're once again left in the cold, wet winter.

Believing in the impossible. It's not as easy as it once was. There was a time when believing the impossible was as easy as believing school would be canceled the next day when you woke due to snow. There was a time when bad news only came in fairy tales and light could scare all monsters from underneath your bed.

As the years pack on, you find out that bad news live outside of books and the safest place is with the imaginary monsters under your bed. Hope becomes harder to grasp and the impossible begins to live up to it's definition.

I turned out all the lights in my room because I want those annoying orange street lights to shine tonight. I want them to shine so that I can see the little flakes fall from the sky. As hard as life gets and as the bad news continues (as it always will in this life) to pour into our lives, I never want to lose hope. I never, not for a single minute, ever want to stop believing that good exist, that the impossible can become possible.

The snow has stopped now. It might begin again, it might not. All I know is that I'm thankful for it's brief presence. I'm thankful for the little peace it brought into my heart tonight.

Life is full. It is so full. I can't stop believing in the good. I won't let myself stop believing.