We Have to Let God (or Good) Do More

We have to let God (or Good) do more. We just have to.

This is hard for even the most faithful. I know people raised in faith who regularly get down on their knees to pray to a very specific God they feel quite familiar with, and then still go about their day acting like God is totally sus and should not be trusted. It would be kind of hilarious if it wasn’t so daunting for the rest of us miserable, faithless BLEEPERs. 

My life got a whole lot better as soon as I started to really experiment with surrender and started playing a lot more wait and see with Good (or God). That’s the point of surrender, and I get that it is really, really, really, really, really, really hard. That’s probably not enough reallys, but you get the idea. This is why recovery programs are always talking about letting go. Let go and let God is one of those simple and fundamental pillars of spiritual recovery, but it’s so difficult to grasp, they often recommend people in early recovery go to 40 meetings in 40 days to get a serious amount of spiritual reps in. 

In the past, the primary issue for me was impatience. My traumatized brain has been moving 160 miles an hour since I was a child. I’d venture to guess that if you’re reading this blog, so has yours. There is something about trauma and stress that starts the engines of the human brain. Synapses start firing everywhere, all the time, trying to predict the next catastrophe, reliving the last or the worst one, trying to figure out where to hide or how to escape judgment or whatever other exhausting thing we think or do as a response to stress, betrayal, fear, or heartache. 

People who don’t live in the basket case that is the stressed out brain couldn’t possibly understand. What is the big BLEEPING problem? They wonder. Just pull your BLEEP together. Get a hold of yourselves! 

Ah, if only. 

Meanwhile, I do now fundamentally believe that getting a grip on the unbridled brain, slowing down, and finding ways to choose better, different, or more productive thoughts is the most important thing a person can do for their well being and betterment. I also know that it often feels like that is the one thing a tortured soul cannot do. If it were that easy, wouldn’t we have done it already? 

This is where faith comes in. There is something very productive about externalizing fate and slowing ourselves down long enough to just see what can happen if we stop BLEEPing around with our own fortune. If we allow ourselves a tiny little bit of faith as an experiment, exercise enough self-control and a smattering of skeptical optimism to let the Universe or God or Good intervene on our behalf, the outcomes are better. 

And, honestly, the outcomes might not actually be better, but because they are not of our own garbage making, we have to be more open-minded and more willing to reframe them as a consequence of God (or Good). Outcomes are always unpredictable (because, let’s admit, humans are the worst fortune tellers on the BLEEPING planet. Birds or inanimate objects are probably better at forecasting the future than we are), but because the outcomes in the context of faith are not of our own making and meddling, they are often easier to accept or appreciate or imbue with meaning. Whatever happens next, if we hold still and let it happen, is far better because we were not integral to the outcome, be it good or bad. 

Everything integral to being human makes us feel like we have the potential to be masters of our own universes. Our fat little fingers and thumbs and our big, dumb brains make us feel like surely, I must be the conquerer of worlds! Surely, I must have all the answers and be the solver of all problems! The irony is we can get a lot more done and enjoy it all more at the same time if we do less and accept more. 

Ah, life is full of magical, mystical, BLEEPING infuriating paradoxes, isn’t it?