~a reminder of hope over Longwood Medical Area~
Nowadays, as I’m sure 2020 has been for most everyone, it feels like a different part of me dies each day.
Yet, I simultaneously feel like I’m living life to the fullest, and I have never been more in love with who God has made me to be and this life He has given me.
Sound paradoxical? Let me explain…
Yes, emotional and physical pains are still a consistent part of reality. My imperfect body continues to experience forms of death — from the familiar headaches to recent stomach pains. And true to an enneagram type 4, I continue to feel oh so deeply — every emotion takes me to the highest mountain and deepest valley (there’s no other way I wanna live btw;).
Perhaps the most recurrent death comes as the disruption of dreams in my headspace. In today’s reality, seemingly nothing goes according to plan. I literally just cancelled my Thanksgiving travel plans. I’ve watched my friends cancel their weddings. Vacations to dream destinations have been postponed indefinitely. Board exams, lab experiments, graduations were all forced aside. For me, I anticipated the hardest and most fulfilling (third) year of dental school. Instead, I found myself back home watching Zoom lectures tucked inside my childhood bed. When I finally returned to Boston, I lived in the uncomfortable uncertainty of how my clinical skills would develop with our decreased clinic time. Even now, my classmates and I continue to wrestle with feelings of time wasted and clinic schedules beyond our control.
This surrender of dreams is often compounded by the agonizing death to comfort. This death takes on the most innumerable forms. Mourning the tumultuous state of our nation. Helplessly watching housemates wince with stabbing physical pains. Grieving the loss of loved ones; a sense of belonging and purpose.
Little did I know that from the depths of these pains would spring forth the most joyous freedom I have ever experienced. Over the months I cried to God about every pain that my heart and soul were fixated upon, He tenderly whispered to me:
“Give it to me. All of it. For I have already taken it.”
This still, small voice asking me to surrender my pain was from Love Himself. The Love who took not only my sins upon that cross, but every pain, suffering, and death I would ever experience. Love asked me to surrender my pain because He understood pain itself is often if not always the result of hanging onto control.
The thing about being human is that we live in a world in which we are not sovereign. Everyday, we respond to external circumstances beyond our control and strive to maintain a status quo. Subtly, whether we realize or not, these external conditions vie to fixate into our center of focus. Pleasures seduce us into becoming our center. Pains demand to be our center.
Paradoxically, the One who is truly in control does not impose his will upon us, but rather allows us to live with free will. Herein lies the beautiful tension of surrender — when we relinquish control to the sovereign True Center, we never lose our freedom of choice. Instead, we find ourselves resting in the promises of the One who wills forth our greatest good in the midst of pain and tells us to live abundantly, unshackled from the burdens of holding on.
This understanding of surrender manifested in a prayer that I now begin each day with:
Father God,
I give you this day. I lay at your feet my every thought, word, and deed today. Go before me in every conversation today. All that I am I give to you. Make me as small as possible today, that You might be as big as possible. Amen.
A powerful freedom is unlocked with this heart posture because once I have surrendered control of my day, it is no longer on me to make sure that day goes according to plan. Far from “giving up” on the day’s events, this framework of surrender actually empowers me to engage even more deeply with life because it frees me from unhealthy mental fixations. Come what may, He is with me. He rejoices each victory with me, he dies each death with me. I will share in the fellowship of His comfort and sufferings.
I am thus able to carry my friends’ burdens in a way I could never on my own. I can experience an incomprehensible peace when my patient doesn’t show up to clinic because I’ve already entrusted that encounter to the One who is sovereign over my every interaction. And I am free to take risks and go all out in spontaneous adventures because I know by definition, everything God gives back to me is for my ultimate good, whether it comes in this life or the next. In each day’s pleasures, I recognize I am tasting a glimpse of Eternal Joy. In each day’s pains, I am given space to mourn yet never lose hope.
And so we continue forth, in the uncertain future of 2020 and beyond. Each day, begun with intentional surrender, invites Love to ease the sting of death and permeate every circumstance with hope. A renewed assurance awakens:
I will die every death until all that remains is Joy Himself.
"And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation." 2 Corinthians 1:7
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