Surrender Means Not Wanting What you Can't Have

In my ongoing attempt to understand all of the changes in my life I am constantly finding a spiritual lesson in most things.  My big aha moment for this weekend was that it will be much easier to live with the changes in my diet if I learn to not want the things I can't have, like alcohol or processed foods or sugar.

I have been reading all of lent about surrender.  If not eating these things will make me healthier then surrendering my will to the improvement in health I will gain from not wanting or craving those foods will make me stronger.  It doesn't make it easier to do it this way, but if I look at is as a spiritual exercise, what I am gaining is even greater than what I am giving up.

So, my mindset is changing.  It isn't an easy or immediate change, but each day as I make good choices and don't crave or whine because I can't have something I would have just mindlessly eaten a few weeks ago I know that God is leading me.  And I can see by the numbers on the scale and the way my clothes fit that my lifestyle changes are making a difference.   I think of those things as signal graces that I am on the right track.

I hope my journey can inspire others to take charge of their lifestyle and health and make good choices.

Pax

untangling the knot

God isn't speaking to me in words.
I may have told you this before.
When I pray I either get great gaping silence:



































or I get images. The problem with the images is that I don't know what they mean. It is like picking up a knitting project only to find that my yarn is all tangled into a huge mess. Where do you start when what you find is this?I know that I am not sure where to begin. I just drop the work in frustration and move on to something else.

I should, I suppose be happy that I am aware that God is close to me. There are those who are in the dark night of the soul who don't have that awareness.

Where I used to feel that I could float forever on the warmth of the ocean of mercy that is my Loving God. Now I feel as though I am being pulled under, and I am struggling, gasping for breath as I submerge, struggling against whatever change is coming. Then today it occurred to me that I should just cooperate.

One of my friends said something though that really gave me pause. I am struggling because I am still trying to do this, whatever it is that is happening, whatever is causing such chaos inside of me. Perhaps my response should be that I should stop doing, and let God take over completely. Maybe that is why it is such a struggle; because I am "trying to help."

If I surrender completely to the change and get out of God's way maybe the change can happen more easily and there won't be as much struggle. Maybe the knot will unravel itself if I just leave it alone instead of trying so hard to untangle the ends.

Something to think about . . . in the silence.

Pax

Speaking of Surrender

Since my previous post is about sainthood and surrender to God's Divine Will I want to share a paragraph I read today from Sacrament of the Present Moment:

. . . the cruel chisel destroys a stone with each cut. But what the stone suffers by repeated blows is no less than the shape the mason is making of it. And should a poor stone be asked "What is happening to you?", it might reply "Don't ask me. All I know is that for my part there is nothing for me to know or do , only to remain steady under the hand of my master and to love him and suffer him to work out my destiny. It is for him to know ho wto acheive this. I know neither what he is doing nor why. I only know that he is doing what is best and most perfect, and I suffer each cut of the chisel as though it were the best thing for me, even though, to tell the truth, each one is my idea of ruin, destruction and defacement. But ignoring all this, I rest content with the present moment. Tinking only of my duty to it, I submit to the work of this skillful master without caring to know what it is. . . . Let God's will be done and surrender yourself to him!