How often do you have that sense that SOMETHING is right around the corner for you? It’s coming, and you want it, but it is . . . just – beyond your reach. If you can only try a LITTLE harder . . .

Or that making sense of this specific thing, having this ah-ha moment, is on the very, very tip of your brain. It’s almost there, so close you can almost touch it . . . until you can’t, and you realize you can’t get yourself there on your own either.

This summer as I walked and pondered and figured, in the process of creating this site, this business, this new way of life, really, these four little instructions “suddenly” began swirling around me, like voices on the wind, I would receive one of these reminders . . .  

don’t reach

don’t grasp

don’t cling

don’t resist

We reach for things we feel are coming to us, reaching, reaching, stretching out to take hold of them. Reaching for understanding that we might not really be ready for yet. Hours spent trying to figure out who we are, where we’re going, what it all means. Reasoning and figuring until it just plain hurts.

We grasp for things, trying frantically to catch things, good things, things that are INDEED meant for us, but we’re so eager for them to hurry up and GET here already, and we grasp at them for fear they’ll pass us by and we’ll miss them. We want the answers now. We want the results this very minute.

We cling to the past or to the things we don’t want to, or are afraid to, let go of, even when we might know it’s time for them to go, or maybe they weren’t really ours in the first place. We create rules for ourselves and try, try, try so hard to stick with them and to keep up with it all.

We cling, we reach, we grasp, thinking that we’ll pull good things to us, but ironically, it is by these very efforts to control things that we end up resisting them.

There are other ways that we resist the good things that are coming our way. We resist with our feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness or a feeling that we need to earn, we need to be better, we need to be enough first. God WANTS to give to us abundantly, and yet half the time He’s trying to give us something (often something that we’ve been praying or hoping for) and we’re going, “No, oh no, I was asking for that, but really, I just realized that I’m not good enough to deserve that yet,” or “I’m actually really not ready yet, but thanks for the offer!” We are literally shutting Him down. We are asking for something in one breath and turning Him down in the next.

Part of surrender is RECEIVING what He wants us to have, and we are already, every single one of us, enough AND worthy, so don’t let the world try to convince you otherwise.

Remember as you go along, growth is a process that we simply cannot rush. Don’t reach. Don’t grasp. Don’t cling. And at the same time, don’t resist. The opposite way, a new and better way, to each of these is to release control (deep breath and sigh) . . . surrender.

Perhaps these lovely, helpful reminders will start gently swirling around you, too.