Week 3 - the Prayer of Relinquishment

DAY 1 - OPEN HANDS 

Sit with your hands clenched for a moment. Name silently what you are holding.

Then slowly open your hands and pray:

God, this is what I am holding: the worry about Gem and the kids
I bring it to you.
I do not know how to let go fully.
Teach me to trust you.
Amen.

Reflection Questions

What am I holding tightly right now?

problems with the family

Gem struggling with finances

Alex and Lorelei struggling to get on an even keel

River still mourning Tommy excessively

Kit not recovering from her heart attack and her daily needs

Bonita's metastasized lung cancer that has reached her liver

What outcome am I trying to control?

I just want their wellbeing

What desire do I need to bring honestly before God?

Fix it, please, make their way smoother

What makes surrender feel difficult or frightening?

He hasn't answered

I don't know what the outcome will be

I wonder how we all will cope with what happens next

My friend went blind 10 years ago.  She has retinitis pigmentosa, but despite other doctors telling her she would be completely blind by age 50, one told her she would have very limited sight and she hung onto that statement until she was 66.  She is very angry and bitter and has been for a decade.  We've talked about it many times because it was not within the sphere of her influence or the realm of her control - there is nothing she could've done differently.  Indeed, she had 16 years longer than she was told originally!  So, how do you give up something like that? 

And don't even get me started about how powerless I feel since 2024.  How do you accept evil when you are powerless to stop it?

DAY 2 - “Not My Will, but Yours Be Done”

Pray slowly:

Father, if you are willing, ________. Smooth the way for all of them, ease their struggles, give them breathing space to live, to be

Yet not my will, but yours be done.

Pause after each line.

Then pray:

The desire I am bringing to God is ________.  Not asking for things to be perfect but asking for these people that I love to be at peace.  Asking to be able to actually help them myself if possible

The trust I am asking for is ________.  You are asking me to accept and I struggle against that.  I want to change what is written, alter it for the better.  I need to be taught acceptance

"If God is Will

And Will is well

Then what is Ill?

God Still?

Dew tell"

~ Nickles in JB by Archibald MacLeish

I wrote a ten page paper on this couplet when I was in high school, but never have come to an answer to it in my own life

Reflection Questions

What does Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane teach me about surrender?

I've always wondered what Jesus knew about the future,   He saw the pain and torment ahead of him, but did He know about the Resurrection?  

What “cup” would I ask God to remove right now?

I don't want to work anymore.  I want to retire.  

Can I name my desire honestly without demanding my way?

I think so?  Because I don't see how I can do it financially and I am grateful that I have a job that provides me with the ability to live comfortably.  My current plan is to work until I cannot, whether due to physical/mental disability or because the job goes away 

What would it mean to pray, “not my will, but yours,” in this situation?

This I can accept - it is totally out of the realm of my control.  I worry about it,  of course, because I don't want to be impecunious or a burden, but I have no choice but to trust that it will work out in the end.  In other words, what will be will be.

DAY 3 - NAMING IT

Relinquishment is not always a single moment. Sometimes it is a repeated prayer. We open our hands, and later we notice they have closed again. Then we pray again.

God, I am holding tightly to…  I was inconsiderately inpatient with my barista this morning - I apologized at the time but I keep circling back to that interaction and wishing I hadn't been that way

I am afraid that if I let go…  I'll once again be focused on me instead of realizing she was overwhelmed by many orders coming in at the same time

What I want is…  forgiveness and not to be thought less of

What I cannot control is…  I can't go back in time and erase the negativity of that interaction

Teach me to trust you with…  judgement - Yours and hers and mine - and to stop obsessing over it and apologizing

Pray with open hands:

God, I release __this incident______ to you.

I release the outcome.

I release the timeline.

I release my need to control what I cannot control.

Hold this with me.

Hold this for me.

Amen.

Reflection Questions

How can you tell when you are gripping something or someone too tightly?

When I am worried about someone, I tend to hover - to text or call with increasing frequency, which sometimes has the impact of becoming burdensome rather than helpful.  It's rather like a firehose when I intend as sustaining as a waterfall....

Once you notice that, how do you begin to let go?

Unfortunately, I tend to go to the opposite extreme of assuming no news is good news and not reaching out at all.  Or as a priest once told me about the way I reacted to being a caretaker for my husband who was suffering from dementia, I put on a suit of armor when a raincoat would've done the job.

What is it like to physically open your hands when you pray a prayer of surrender?

It is a physical effort to stop and think about laying my hands open for the learned position of formal prayer is clasped hands or palm-to-palm with fingers pointed up.  The good nuns used to complain if we prayed with our hands clasped because our fingers were pointing down to the earth instead of boosting our prayers heavenward...

DAY 4:  LOSING OR LETTING GO?

If I surrender, does that mean I stop caring?

If I let go, will things fall apart?

If I trust God, does that mean I should stop acting?

What if God asks me to give up something I love?

What if I do not want God’s will yet?  Precisely.  I prayed for my son to return to health but the Lord had other plans.  I prayed for my soon to be ex son-in-law to come to his sense and he continues down his chosen path.  I'm struggling with accepting that maybe I prayed for the wrong thing - Tommy was so tired at the end and worn out.  Craig may have been presented with a choice and wilfully turned away

What if I pray the words, but my heart is not ready?  This is where I am, hoping that "faking it until I can make it" will work if I say the words enough times 

These questions matter. Relinquishment should not be rushed. We are not pretending that surrender is easy. We are learning to be honest with God about why it is hard.

Sometimes the first prayer of relinquishment is not “I surrender everything.” Sometimes it is:

God, I want to want your will.

God, help me open my hands.

God, I am afraid to trust you with this.

That is still prayer.

Pray slowly:

God, I am not sure I am ready to release ________. my will for Yours

I am afraid because ________.  the outcomes may be so hard to live with

Meet me in my resistance.

Help me trust your love.

Teach me the freedom of open hands.

Reflection Questions

What makes letting go feel like loss to me?

Because I want to fix it

When I was young I demonstrated against the Vietnam War, for civil rights, for feminism.  I was so convinced that we were going to somehow make the world more fair.  When working I advocated for teams and knowledge management and a "school of fishies" management structure rather than a traditional hierarchal structure.

 When I was raising my kids, I always said "Life is not fair.  Cope" because I wanted them to be realists, but I always figured there was a way to better.  

I don't want to be a fatalist. 

What am I afraid will happen if I release control?

I get cynical when listening to other's stories, prattling about "religion being the opiate of the masses", or start to berate myself because I am unable to feel the comfort they obviously have found.

Where might God’s invitation to surrender actually be an invitation to freedom?

You always have a choice.  What has happened and is happening with my family is not within the sphere of my control or the realm of my influence, so the only choice that I have is how that lack of control impacts me.  

Remember my obsessing about the way I treated that barista?  After I said the words of surrender, struggling to mean them [had to try three times], and went on with the day, I didn't think about the incident until right now.  I was granted freedom from angst about that 

What is the most honest prayer I can pray today, even if I am not ready to let go?

Lord, help me in my unbelief and mistrust.  I want to have faith, to believe that things are as they should be, but from my family to my country I see so much pain and I don't know how to help and none of it is within my control.   Please bear with my rebellious WHY and soothe my troubled spirit

DAY 5:  PRACTISING 

Choose one small act of surrender today.

Examples:

Before a difficult conversation: God, I release my need to control how this goes.

When plans change: God, help me receive this interruption with grace.

When resentment returns: God, I release my right to keep replaying this.

When worried about someone you love: God, I entrust them to your care.

When facing a decision: God, guide me toward faithfulness, not control.

Pray this sentence several times today:

God, I open my hands to you.

If helpful, physically open your hands each time you pray it.

Reflection Questions:

What did I learn this week about control and trust?

I don't trust the Lord's plans for my family's wellbeing is the same as mine and I struggle against the testing he is laying upon us

Where did I notice my hands closing again?

Acceptance
Always having to accept that bad things happen to good people

What small surrender could I practice this week?

Sometimes I think I hug my resistance to myself as though it will warm or comfort me

How might relinquishment make me more free to love?

Time and attention are finite resources - and in order to really love, I have to be able to make sure I am not devoting those resources to stewing over what is wrong with me, with my family, with the country, with the world