Finding Freedom in Surrender

I was jettisoned down the hospital corridor on a gurney.

As though on a magic carpet, masked surgeons flew along side me.

I was pregnant, just 10 days away from the due date.

Something was wrong. 

My water had broken and there was blood. Too much.

The triage nurses couldn't find a consistent heartbeat.

If they couldn't find one soon, they'd declare an emergency.

"Everything will start moving very fast," a nurse warned, willing me to look into her eyes. "So if you need to have a nervous breakdown, have it fast, right now."

So I'd quickly sobbed and now they were running me to the O.R.

The nurse was right. Everything was moving very fast. No one spoke to me.

This was an emergency. I was completely powerless, just a body with a mound for a stomach, bouncing down the corridor toward an unknown fate.

I was 27 years old. This was the first time I'd experienced such powerlessness.

It was also the first time I'd receive the gifts of surrender.

In the O.R. things were happening to my body as I lay flat on my back.

A surgeon to my left dropped an instrument and cursed.

"Am I dying?" I asked.

For a moment, everything seemed to stop.

"Oh, no sweetheart," the cursing surgeon said, putting his cool hand on my forehead. "We would never let you die."

Deep calm seemed to radiate from his hand.

"Will you just hold my hand then?" I asked.

As someone placed a mask over my face, he held my left hand and a nurse reached through the crowd of surgeons and held my right.

The world went black.

The surgeon may have gone back to cursing as they intubated me, cut me open and withdrew my baby boy.

For my part, I might as well have died.

My hands held and the promise that they would fight to save me, I put my life -- and the life of my baby -- in their hands.

There are many ways to experience powerlessness.

I could have gone down fighting, alone, humiliated, struggling -- or by surrendering.

One way or the other, I was going to drop into darkness and knives were going to cut me open to try to save my first-born's life.

I chose surrender.

In that surrender, I asked for a hand and got two.

Those hands made all the difference.

Sometimes still, for much smaller things, I fight, hang on too long. And when I finally let go, I wonder why I didn't do it sooner.

When I finally throw in the towel, surrender is indeed sweet.

This struggle to control, punctuated by letting go, seems to be the essence of the human condition.

My greatest reward for my surrender, was the delivery of my healthy baby, who awaited me as I clawed my way up from heavy anesthetic and a painful c-section.

The other reward was the discovery that stays with me now: I am never alone.

Hands are always there to hold, if only I ask.

Surrendering may be the bravest thing we ever do.

It is not giving up. Surrender is turning it over. It is an act of supreme trust. And the admission that we are not always in control.

This is faith; that "when we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God and we understood God," as they say in Step 3 of the 12 Steps, things could turn out better than we ever imagined.

When have you surrendered to the uncontrollable circumstances?

When have you asked someone to hold your hand?

I'm telling you now, you are brave.