We recovery folks have a lot of dirty words. Surrender is definitely one of them. Yet I glibly renew my intention to surrender to God each time I do my daily renewal. So what do I know, or need to come to know, about surrender?

Surrender is inevitable. I will surrender. The variable is “to whom?” I can surrender to God: give Him control of my day, my care, my reputation, my desire for physical and emotional comfort. To Him, I can surrender my right to be resentful, to worry, to strike back, to lie, and to zone out. I can submit to doing things the way I know He wants me to do them.

Or I can surrender to my lust. Or my selfishness. Or my desire to feel good. Or worry. Or self-pity. But surrendering to my will always leads me to doing things against my will! And against my best self-interest.

Surrender can be uncomfortable. If God runs the show, there will be times when I will experience discomfort. If not, I would never grow and change. By surrendering to sobriety, I’ve renounced my ability to control when I’ll have sex. If I want to have sex and my wife doesn’t, I have some choices. I can act out with myself. I can act out with others. I can coerce her. None of these is a sober choice. They are not God’s way. If I’m serious about surrender, then the only choice is to sit with my temporary discomfort and frustration, and trust that God knows what I need: to sit in the feelings and not have sex. This ain’t easy or fun.

Surrender is uncomfortable in other ways, too. It may mean putting another’s needs ahead of mine or derailing a particular train of thought. It can mean doing what I don’t want to do at that moment. Or no longer accepting my weaknesses as unchangeable limitations. Surrender means letting God define me, neither wallowing in self-loathing nor self-promotion. Surrender means I’m not in control and often I won’t like it.

Surrender is incremental. Surrendering the right and release of masturbation. That was huge. Surrendering the right and habit of fantasizing about women. Surrendering the right to look, to critique the human scenery. In early recovery, that seemed way too much. Now it feels hard, but doable.

But not just lust-based actions and attitudes. I’m learning now to surrender by moving into a new level of honesty. I’m learning to surrender when challenged in the little choices. I’m realizing that I often get into trouble not because of making wrong choices (acting out, taking hits, etc.), but by not making the best choice for that time. I have to accept that surrender is something I will never fully master in this lifetime.