Every year at this time, I spend some time in meditation in contemplation of a word to guide me throughout the upcoming year. It isn’t so much of an active ‘in search of’ a word but rather a letting the word arise within me.

This year, the word that continues to arise is ‘surrender’.

Now, here’s the deal — every time the word appears in my mind, I try to resist, push it away, look to see if some other word is hanging around in the background.

Yup.  I am resisting accepting ‘surrender’. Sounds to me like ‘surrender’ just might be the word!

Over the holidays, my beloved and I were both down for the count with a cold/flu virus. Now, I did get my flu shot but for some reason, it still struck. We did do the prerequisite holiday celebrations but cancelled out on a number of parties to which we’d been invited. It meant we spent a lot of time in bed, reading, bingeing on Netflix and napping. Not a bad way to spend the break and while it would have been wonderful to see friends, the flu dictated self-care.

One of the things I did not want to surrender to was giving up on our planned trip to Vancouver for New Year celebrations. Finally, yesterday morning, mere hours before we were scheduled to fly out, both C.C. and I had to admit it. We were not yet feeling well enough to go.

Perhaps it was practice for the upcoming year where ‘surrender’ is my guiding word. I had to surrender to my disappointment at not seeing my daughter and son-in-love and the sadness of not spending time with my grandson. As my daughter reminded me, ‘when you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t spend as much time with those you love.’

And perhaps, that is where my surrender lies — In accepting I need to take care of me. No one else can. I am 100% responsible for my own well-being. My own self-care.

Dang. I was hoping to surrender that to someone else! Instead, surrender lays in accepting that there is no ‘prince-charming’, fairy-godmother or magical being who is going to ride-in and sweep away all the things I’m doing that aren’t ‘good self-care’.

Yup. Self-care is my domain. My responsibility.

I think I have a lot of work to do on this ole’ surrender thing.

Where once I focused on ‘surrendering to let go of expectations’ I realize there’s work to be done on surrendering my ego which says, you got this, even when I don’t.

Harsh reality — I just don’t got the self-care gig down pat. In fact, I’m kind of lousy at it.

Surrendering my ego to the reality of what is true, means letting go of my ego-driven need to ignore my own self-care in an effort to appear always, in charge, on top of everything and a-ok.

My beloved and I had the flu this holiday season. I didn’t want to deal with it.

In my resistance, surrender arose in my consciousness awakening me to the truth — I’ve got some work to do on this surrendering gig!

Here’s to a year of exploring what it means to truly surrender.

And even as I type that, the little ole’ critter inside hisses “Loser! Surrender means you’re giving up.”

Oh dear.  Definitely some work to do on that one!