Surrender

What a word - "Surrender." If you look at the context people use it under most of the time, it is often linked with defeat. The only time I can think of "surrender" being used somehow favorable falls in the category of romance novels. 

  "Violet's tumult of thoughts and hesitations slowly surrendered to the line of passionate kisses the captain was blazing down the length of her graceful throat." 

 As a woman of an ever more certain age, I'm not sure that's even a positive use of the term. 

 The dictionary also looks on the word in a downhearted light. Giving in to the enemy? How often are we at war?

...how often ARE we at war? With ourselves, with the people and world around us... with the universe. Hm.

At the bottom of the definition, there is another term: "yielding." Let's deep-dive into that, shall we?

Surrender as a positive idea came to me in a yoga class when a teacher encouraged students to "surrender to the pose." By this she encouraged first noticing your whole body, paying attention to areas where you feel discomfort or tension. Instead of letting the discomfort create more discomfort and tension in your brain or other areas of the body, you soften. Sounds weird, right? In that moment of tension, you practice keeping your breath calm, cool, and easy; and aim to bring ease to the tense places, not by backing out the pose; but instead by trying to relax the muscles and be comfortable just being where you are. With all of it. 

THIS, my friends, is surrender. 

Inside the old barn. 

Surrender doesn't mean giving up. It means allowing what IS to be. Hurt and hope, uncertainty and determination, fear and faith... all woven together in an extraordinary fabric that ultimately becomes something we can't begin to imagine. Surrender doesn't ask you to allow your purpose to be defeated, but instead to find peace in the process of finding out what your true purpose is. 

On the surface, just a couple of weeks ago, surrender for me was allowing the idea that we may have to rip our old barn down and use salvageable remnants to create something new. That hurt, and even still there was hope in it. What hurt worse was thinking nothing would happen with it in Uncle Hank's lifetime; and we surrendered to that too.

That's when the shift started. 

Today, I'm writing to tell you that there is work happening as we speak on the barn. Before the end of this month, arguably the weakest spot in the structure will be strengthened. This is happening because a kind man made time to survey the space inside and out, top to bottom; educate me a bit on the Amish perspective, and then took on the work. 

That guy will get a blog post all to his own. Maybe several, as early on in this process, he'd approached me about creating a how-to guide for other people with limited funds and giant structures who want to reclaim them. There's room for everything in cyberspace, isn't there? 

For now, the back wall is the place to start. Right in the middle of the barn. Aside from a patch over the biggest hole in the roof and new cement to fill the hole the woodchucks made in the foundation, the difference won't be noticeable from the outside. 

It's what's on the inside that counts though, right?