The Shiny Side of Surrender

The horizon is pale blue and crowned with clouds that wisp and curl. Above my head, though, beyond the maple leaves tipped with gold, the sky is an azure dome, cloudless and brilliant. Five minutes from now, it will be something new. New clouds, new shapes, new shades of blue. Five weeks from now, the leaves above my head will crunch beneath my feet. Everything is flux. Everything is change. I breathe it in.

I’m struck with the urge to float to the ground in leaflike surrender. I remember a moment, roughly two years ago, when I did just that in this very same spot, only it really wouldn’t be right to call it floating. It was a collapse. A crumbling. A breaking apart. I felt composted, reduced to humus. I was terrified that I would have to give up custody of my kids because I was too sick to take care of them. Some of you know that pain all too well, and my biggest, squishiest cyber hug is reserved for you.

Two years ago, I collapsed in surrender because there was nothing else to do. No other option. No way out but through. Today’s surrender is of the shinier sort. It’s the surrender of being perfectly content with this moment just as it is. A surrender to beauty, to the changing of seasons, to what is and to what is to come.

Of course, we know what is to come: the gold-tipped leaves will crumble, be composted, reduced to humus. The blue sky will darken, and this moment will be gone. But the thing that gives any moment power or beauty or transformative potential? Our presence. Our surrender to what is. I get to take that with me into the next season—get to keep on practicing it in my bumbling, stop-and-go way.

Surrender is easy today. My body recovered rapidly from my most recent round of Covid—a glorious and unexpected gift, given how my first two bouts went. I took my kids camping this past week, and I’m still riding on a wave of happiness from those hours in the woods with people I love. But life is life, and I know there will be a moment (and soon) when it all feels too hard and too exhausting. And so, I’m writing this to help me remember. And I hope it’s helping you remember: that there are perfect, shining moments of surrender, too. That the heartbreak of crumbly, composted surrender doesn’t just break us apart. It breaks us open. And that openness? Maybe that’s how beauty gets in. Maybe it’s how love gets in. Maybe it’s how a new season begins.

Whatever season you are in right now, I wish you shining moments. Moments in which you are content to simply be. In which your falling feels like a floating. Radiant moments of red and gold surrender.