Surrender has never been gentle for me…

I envy people who seem to softly lay things down before God. People who appear to transition peacefully from striving into trust.

My surrender feels more like a crashing plane. A massive aircraft not built to come down easily.

Everything in it wants to remain in the air. The engines are still trying. The body is shaking violently. Warning lights are flashing. The turbulence is unbearable. And somewhere in the chaos, the pilot realizes:
this plane cannot stay up any longer.

The wings are damaged. And so begins the brutal process of bringing it down safely.

That is what surrender has often felt like in my life.

It’s never graceful, nor quiet.
It’s merely ever poetic.

It’s violent almost. Like sitting in a plane hearing the pilot say ‘may-day, may-day’!

There are parts of me that desperately want to keep flying. Keep performing. Keep carrying. Keep controlling. Keep surviving at high altitude where nobody can see the damage properly.

But God, in His mercy, sometimes forces the landing.

And it is rarely without sacrifice. Things break. Pride breaks. Illusions break. Strength breaks.

The version of me that thought she could sustain herself forever breaks. But somehow… the plane survives.

And maybe that is the miracle of surrender. Not that it feels peaceful in the moment.
But that God safely brings down what would have eventually destroyed itself trying to stay in the air.

KNOWN speaks a lot about surrender. Not the pretty Christian version. The real version.

Almost like where your spirit knows God is calling you downward before He can rebuild you upward. Where your body feels the cost of obedience. Where exhaustion becomes the evidence that you fought the landing with everything in you.

But I am learning this: a forced landing in the hands of God is still mercy.

Some things cannot be healed at thirty thousand feet…

Love
V.L