Surrender

I just read an awesome post by Amy Maxwell on the topic of surrender. (Read the April 6 post entitled "Note to Readers"...I highly recommend going and reading it). It made me think about the surrender that God asks of me and my family in this journey to the Army.

The surrender for me is not in going into the Army. To be honest, that excites me. I look forward to being a chaplain and wearing my country's uniform. Surrender for me is not going on deployment. Actually serving on foreign soil also holds allure for me. Where does surrender come for me? It comes in surrendering my family.

The call to discipleship is the call to surrender (Luke 9:23, "If anyone should come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.") When God called me to the chaplaincy, He underscored this surrender as it pertained to my family (Matthew ch. 10: anyone who loves father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter more than me is not worthy to be my disciple).

Wow. This surrender He asks of me hits me where I live.

"God...these are the ones you have called me to serve, protect, and nurture. How can I throw them to the wolves by leaving them like this?"

Then as I read Amy's post mentioned above, this is what God brought to me about surrendering my family.

Imagine a little boy who is bringing home a present that he made at school for his mother. He prizes this possession. His heart treasures this gift he wants to present. As he walks home with his father, rain has been falling all day, and now the streets are flooded. As the boy and his father approach a particularly swollen part of a stream they must cross, the father asks the boy to give him the gift intended for the mother. The boy does not want to let it go. It is his to protect and deliver. Finally, through the little boy's tears, the father insists that the boy give over the prize. The boy feels like he has lost everything, but in reality he has given what is most important to him to his father who is bigger, stronger, and more able to deliver it safely over the danger.

I am not surrendering my family to be left alone. I am delivering them up to a God who loves them even more than I can. I deliver them up to a God who wants to work His perfect plan in their lives, too, to make them what He wants them to be. I deliver them up to a God who is bigger, stronger, and infinitely more able than I to deliver them safely through the torrents that await us.