My family was recently waylaid by one of those post-covid chimera viruses that brought fevers, stomach issues, sore throats, as well as plenty of fatigue and general malaise to the whole crew for over a week. Thankfully, we’ve all finally started recovering from the unpleasant reminder of the dangers of the post-covid preschool and first grade germ pool.

Like the initial covid lockdown, it was also reminder that being human means being vulnerable to a whole host of things that are often out of your control. It was supposed to be one of the busier, more productive weeks of my summer. There were a host of meetings and events that I simply had to attend. And yet, I couldn’t attend any of them. A whole host of obligations were simply wiped out.

When something overwhelms you like this, you get the feeling you are just a little dot of flotsam floating on an ocean, totally dependent on whatever current or stirring occurs above or below. You’re in it, and that’s it. You’ve just got to breathe through it, and try to accept what often feels unacceptable. There’s grace somewhere in that, but it’s as elusive as the next moment.

For much of my spiritual life, I was convinced that spirituality was an escape from all this. That we humans could break the shackles of our mortal limitations and ascend, so to speak, above all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” That’s probably a good spirituality for a young person to have, to strive and work hard to establish yourself in life, work, and faith.

As I’ve gotten older, however, life just seems to come at me a bit more thick and fast. Things fall apart, especially lower backs. People you love begin to grow older and struggle as well. Friends and important relationships become harder and harder to maintain. Raising small children provides a near never-ending treadmill of physical and mental labor, not to mention guilt from when we often fall short of the ideal. Life gets very hard, and you begin to wonder if and when it will ever get easier.

This, for me, is where any spirituality of “ascending” falls apart. If success after success is the way to God, I’ll never get there. I simply don’t have the energy for that anymore.

A spirituality of surrender suddenly becomes possible, and even more alluring: “Father, into your hands, I commend my Spirit.” It’s strange but true, the older you get, the easier it is to know you’re ultimately just a child, wholly dependent on God. Your to-do list, your career goals, your plans for the summer, all of it like the grass of the field, blooming one day and burning tomorrow.

Here, then, is the opportunity to participate in what I call the sacrament of surrender. To let go, and let God be God and let you be you. To let yourself be what you are, namely, a small, simple, messy human being, with gifts, talents, certainly, and always held in love by the divine gaze, but very small and limited nonetheless. And I like to think that smallness is what makes us so endearing, so irresistible to God’s mercy.

That’s probably bad theology. After all, the sun shines and God loves, it’s just in the nature of the Creator. But the Creator Incarnate liked the image of father and son, and so I’ll use it freely too.

Like a parent looking at a beloved child, God sees the good in you, and in me, even though it may be buried beneath stressors or sickness or even our own shame. How liberating it is to not be your own god, to let God be God, to let love and mercy (which is, after all, the heart of the divine nature) permeate your whole being, to feel the divine love even over achy and aging bones, in fevers and frustration, in joy as in sorrow.

Within this sacrament of surrender, what once felt like annihilation begins to look more like consummation . When you’re in it, sure, it’s harder than hell, but when you’re finally through it, given sufficient time for reflection and the benefit of retrospection, it looks like another pitstop on the path to eternal bliss, another opportunity to pry open closed hands and hearts.

And with open hands and open hearts, surrender and its many cousins, love and joy and gratitude maybe even a flicker or two of peace, finally become possible.