The Patience of Surrender

 It is hard not to become discouraged.

Sometimes it feels as though I am carrying a wound that is nearly seventy years old. I have searched for it. Prayed over it. Sat with it. Cried through it. Tried to understand it.

And yet, it still feels as though something inside me remains frozen in time.

When I cannot seem to reach that place, I feel stuck.

It feels as though the little girl within me is still living with the pain, the fear, and the memories of the past. Sometimes it even seems as though she is afraid of what freedom might feel like.

After all, fear has been familiar.

Freedom has not.

If she has lived her whole life expecting danger, perhaps safety itself feels unfamiliar. Perhaps stepping into the light is not as simple as opening a door. Perhaps it requires trusting a world she never learned to trust.

I have tried to reassure her.

I have told her she is safe.

I have reminded her that she is no longer alone.

Some days those words seem to reach her.

Other days, her fear feels so much bigger than anything I can say.

And that is where I find myself today.

Not with another answer.

Not with another technique.

Only with surrender.

I cannot force healing.

I cannot force the past to let go.

I cannot force a frightened little girl to trust before she is ready.

Love cannot be forced.

Safety cannot be demanded.

Healing cannot be rushed.

Perhaps my task is not to rescue her but to remain faithfully beside her, as long as it takes.

To let her borrow my courage until she discovers her own.

To trust that even when I cannot see movement, something unseen may still be unfolding beneath the surface.

So today, my prayer is simple.

God, give me patience.

Give me the grace to stop measuring healing by how quickly old wounds disappear.

Teach me to trust that staying present is not the same as standing still.

And if all I can do today is love that little girl without asking her to change, then let that be enough.

Looking for Safety

 I think I have spent most of my life searching for one thing.

Safety.

The kind of safety I rarely knew as a child.

I found glimpses of it at my grandparents’ house. There, I could breathe. I could play. I could simply be a little girl.

But I never truly felt it in the home where I grew up.

So I spent the rest of my life searching for what I had lost before I even knew how to name it.

At first, I searched for it in my first boyfriend.

Then in every relationship that followed.

I always believed that having a man beside me would somehow make me feel safe.

I rarely knew how to be alone.

When my partner died two and a half years ago, I didn’t just lose the love of my life.

The little girl inside me lost the place where she believed she was safe.

Since then, I have lost all desire to be in another relationship.

Perhaps because I am beginning to understand that no one outside of me was ever meant to carry that responsibility.

I also searched for safety through control.

If I could plan enough…

Manage enough…

Anticipate every possibility…

Maybe nothing bad would happen.

But the truth is, I never had control to begin with.

Control wasn’t safety.

It was only the illusion of safety.

One by one, the places where my little girl used to hide have disappeared.

The relationships.

The distractions.

The illusion of control.

Without them, there are days when I feel incredibly raw.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

It is not easy to sit with those feelings.

Every part of me wants to run toward something familiar.

But there is nowhere left to run.

Only somewhere to surrender.

Each day I sit beside my little girl.

I speak gently to her.

I remind her that she is no longer alone.

I tell her that I will not abandon her.

She is listening.

But she has not fully learned to trust me in that way yet.

After all, she spent a lifetime believing that safety had to come from somewhere else.

Trust like that is not built in a day.

It is built one gentle moment at a time.

Perhaps one day she will discover what I am only beginning to believe—

That the safety she has searched for all her life has never been found in another person or in control.

It has been quietly waiting…

Within us all along.

Surrender is the Way Home

 I have learned that growing up in dysfunction—especially where there is the constant threat of punishment or abandonment—can leave echoes that last a lifetime.

Not everyone believes in inner child work.

I do.

It has become one of the greatest teachers of my life.

Last night was another difficult night. My bladder symptoms returned with a vengeance, and for a while the pain seemed louder than hope.

But somewhere beneath the pain, I heard a familiar voice.

A voice I have learned to trust.

It whispered, This is the way out.

Immediately I thought of Rumi’s timeless words:

“The cure for the pain is in the pain.”

Those words have carried me through many seasons of my life.

As I sat with the discomfort, I realized that my body is telling a story my mind has never been able to fully tell. To me, it feels as though my bladder is holding onto old fear, and my little girl is still gripping it with all her strength.

Pain has been familiar to her.

Freedom has not.

She learned long ago that holding on felt safer than letting go.

That control felt safer than surrender.

That vigilance felt safer than peace.

I do not judge her for that.

She was only trying to survive.

But I also believe there comes a moment in every healing journey when surviving is no longer enough.

There comes a moment when the heart grows weary of carrying what no longer belongs to it.

A moment when surrender is no longer something we choose…

It is something that gently chooses us.

I don’t believe I am there yet.

But I can feel myself moving closer.

Closer to trust.

Closer to freedom.

Closer to home.