All I am, I surrender.

I used to think that my choice to surrender was something that happened the night I got baptized.  I mean, I know that I definitely surrendered that night.  I remember so clearly the feeling hitting me that I was done fighting to be on my own.  I was His.  It was simple.

What I'm slowly learning, though, is that I have to make the choice to surrender myself to Him every single day.  Over and over again.  Without stopping.  Because what I know all the way down to my bones one day can seem so foreign to me the next.

I have to surrender every time I feel like I'm going into panic mode about school.

I have to surrender every time I feel like I'm not going to survive one more second in this house with my family.

I have to surrender every time I get caught up in drama, every time I forget that I don't live my life for the approval of the people around me, and that their words are not what define who I am.

I have to surrender every second of every day, or I will slip right back into the person and mindset I've spent the last year and almost 9 months trying to get away from.  And the enemy knows it.

Because it's only when I surrender that I can feel myself stepping out of the way and letting God do what He wants to do - protect me, keep me safe.

So if I know that's what God wants to do, why is it so hard for me to let Him do it?!

There are still a lot of chains that God has to break, more than I realized.  Ugh.  And my biggest battle isn't even the surrendering part.  It's the not beating myself up for messing this all up yet again.  I can't focus on all the people who say they've been inspired by my story because then I start thinking about how I feel like I've fooled them all.  That's what confuses me; I try my hardest to be authentic, but if I really am being authentic, how can people tell me how inspiring I am when I don't have my life together any more than anyone else?

Oh yeah.  Because this isn't about me.  Ha.  I love when realizations come to me in the middle of me writing out all of these questions.  People are inspired by me and my story because they see God moving.  It's got nothing to do with how much I have it all together.  I'll never have it together enough to warrant the praise I've heard.  Because the praise isn't about me.  It's about what God is doing through me, for me and for others.

I don't know what the point of this post is.  It started pouring out of me once I heard the lyrics in the title, from the song "Give Me Faith."  I've found myself running over a lot of the same questions lately.  I just need to stop thinking so much.  That's a pretty hard pill to swallow for someone like me.  I really hate not understanding things, not being able to get answers to questions - especially when they keep popping up in my mind and heart.  But I've been seeing recently with people I care about that I'm not always going to get answers from them, even when they promised me such, and they're just broken people like me.  So why do I expect answers from the Lord who is perfect and holy and pure goodness and knows so much better than me?

He's going to work out all of the questions running through my head, all the problems I'm facing right now, all the ache in friendships that are confusing me to bits, for His glory and my good.  Tonight, I choose to rest in that.