Begin Again: A 7-Day Devotional By Leeana TankersleySample

The Other Side of Surrender

One of the most genuinely inconvenient truths I know is that often something has to die in order for something new to live. And so when we know—deep down—that something isn’t working, there’s also a part of us that knows what it’s going to take to make the thing work again. Likely, it’s going to take a death.

Those possible deaths we don’t want to face, those ways of being that we’re so invested in that we are gripping them with every bit of energy we can muster, lead us to thoughts like these: Don’t touch my addiction to work. Don’t touch my overeating. Don’t look twice at my spending. Do not get close to my resentment. Don’t even think about asking me to give up my victim status. Do not, I repeat, do not, come near my codependence.

Jesus himself taught this to his people. He said,

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground,

dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But

if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In

the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that

life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever,

real and eternal.

But who in their right mind wants to look death in the eyes? Or, at least, the possibility of death. It’s hard to think about letting something fall apart, only to put it back together again in a different way.

But on the other side of death, the other side of surrender, is this: movement in, space for movement, in the places where things have been locked down, shut down, deeply tight. We can unseal our hearts. Even just a willingness to reach for the window handle and turn it slowly. Feel the cross breeze.

In that allowing, we step into a place that is not yet. Maybe reluctantly. Maybe with the hardest of hearts, but we leave space for the possibility that something fluid and alive is on its way.

What can you begin to surrender today, knowing that surrender is a journey that leads to life-giving rest?