Surrender is a hard concept to explain, an even harder one to practice. We often think of it as giving up, but it’s not. Neither does it require a person be passive rather than passionate. The following excerpt beautifully illustrates what surrender looks like, both in labor and in life. Surrender is the act of releasing into pain rather than resisting it, for the sake of allowing a process to make it’s progress. Birthing ANYTHING is hard, but the reward is worth it!…
Without realizing it, my body was moving through the stages of labor much more quickly than I (or anyone else) had anticipated. Suddenly as I tried to sit still I pushed my hands against my labor nurse yelling and moaning from within the deepest part of me. “I. Can’t. Do. This!”
My husband tried to soothe me. “You can babe. You can. You’re doing it.”
The next contraction might have been the worst of all, and I called out from a part of myself that had no plan. “Jesus! Please. I can’t.”
Aundi Kolber, Try Softer
I prayed and cried but something in me let it go too. I accepted the pain; I surrendered to it. Thirty five minutes later… I held this miracle in my arms and felt deeply proud of myself. My body had experienced intense pain, but I was still standing. Jesus had walked with me; I had not labored alone. But I knew that I made the most progress in the moment I surrendered. Surrender is when pain does its best work. The moment I let go of needing to control the pain as my son was being born was precisely the moment when I was able to move through – rather than feel stuck in – the pain.”