Submission

            Hello, everyone!  This is my last blog post regarding spiritual disciplines.  Sometime next week, there will be a reflection posted that encompasses my thoughts about this entire semester…so stay tuned for one last post!

            From the spiffy title of this post (I know…I’m lacking in the creative juices right now), this week has been a study and practice of the discipline of submission.  As I am finding from every other discipline, I realized as I studied submission that I truly didn’t know what it meant before this week.  In his book, Foster explains that the result of submission is freedom.  First, there is the freedom from having to get your own way all of the time.  I had never really thought of submission in this light.  To me submission was, and still is a little bit, a conscious way of thinking that involved being humble in all circumstances.  I hadn’t really thought of it like a freedom.  There is also the freedom to value other people.  In short, submission is in service to love.

            This week has been interesting in practicing the discipline of submission.  Honestly, thinking back, I don’t think that I really had a plan or mode of action to practice the discipline.  However, it was something that I would think about often and try to maintain a cheerful attitude while going about my day through the submission of school and work.  Even though I really didn’t have a plan, I did find that I practiced submission.

            One way in which submission was practiced was on Wednesday night.  As it was the last week of classes, I was (and still is) insanely busy.  However, a friend and I made a commitment at the beginning of the semester to visit a refugee family once a week.  Usually, we meet for about an hour or an hour and a half, talking and being friends.  However, this week we ended up staying for two and a half hours!  As we were driving home, I realized that there were so many things that I could have done in that time in order to please myself – such as studying for a test that I had the next day.  However, that time given away, which is usually so precious to me, made me remember that submission involves loving another person unconditionally.

            As I said before, I am extremely busy at this point in the semester.  Assignments are piling up that I have no idea when I will find time to complete them.  While working yesterday, a feeling of panic ensued as I started to list off everything that needed to be accomplished in such a short amount of time.  However, just as that moment came, I remembered the aspect of submission to God.  I am not my own; God is here all of the time.  Thinking about that more, I spent a couple seconds as still as possible and gave everything over to God.  And, it was freeing to be able to rely on God for strength rather than trying every means possible to get my own way and achieve something by myself.

            Be blessed this week, and I will be getting another post to you sometime next week!  Let the countdown to exams begin while still being open to the freedom that comes from submission.