dream outloud

I've been thinking about "surrender" quite a lot lately. The concept. And how I'm really bad at it.  But, how I want to be much, much better at it...when it comes to God.

For so long, I've desired to be wholly surrendered to God, and I thought I was making steps in that direction.  And perhaps I have been.  But I'm holey.  There are so many parts of me that aren't complete because I don't give it up.

In the past couple weeks, I've really been realizing just how much I suck at surrender.  And that as much as I give to God, I know in the deepest part of my heart, that I'm not giving him everything.  So, I've begun to think about "why?".

And I don't know "why?".

Maybe, there's a part of me that I'm afraid God will demand of me, and that He'll want to change it into something that I don't want.  And here's the rub:  that's probably true.  God does want me to give everything to him, and then to transform me into his likeness - to make me wholly His.  The part that I so often forget though, is that God loves me.  And that his ways are perfect.  And his ways are soooo much better than my own.  And that even if he demands the part of me that I hold most precious (and he does), he will do it gently, and carefully.

God won't to take anything away from me that I'm not willing to give.  And he won't try to make me into someone I'm not.  In fact, it's quite the opposite.  He wants to transform me into the real me.  To help me realize who the real me is - his beloved child.  And that's exciting!  I want that!

But...

There's still that part of me, where I see a girl wrapping her whole body tightly around "something".  Something she treasures.  And it appears that it will take either great and painful force to pry her away from her treasure, or incredible gentleness and love to woo her into giving away her treasure...as a gift.  And I want the latter to happen.  I want to get to a point where there's nothing I want more than to give the most precious part of me to God so that He is holding it, and guarding it with all he is.  There is no safer place for my treasure to be than with God.

So why do I still have a death-grip on this treasure?

All I know is that I'm ready, Lord.  I'm ready for you to be tender with me, and be my friend, and to show me that you are safe to give the deepest part of myself too.