A Prayer of Surrender

This past weekend my daughter exchanged wedding vows with her best friend and now husband, Tosh. It was a perfect day. The sun shone brightly in Bend’s beautiful afternoon sky highlighting the majestic Three Sisters mountain in the background. A gentle breeze cooled the delighted audience as they sat in radio silence, watching the elegant wedding party walk down the sunflower flanked aisle making way for the stunning bride’s grand entrance, her dad on one side, and her stepdad on the other.

Embracing a newer trend, Elena and Tosh exchanged vows they wrote themselves. They spoke of each other’s attributes. They spoke of their quirks. They spoke of their love. They recognized that though they could not know their future, they were committed to growing together and encouraging the best in each other whatever the future held for them. And Elena spoke of her prayer of surrender.

Elena did not date much in high school. Though she had a wide circle of friends, there was no special guy, and I saw that as a grace—high school relationships can so often lead to heartache. College brought a bigger pond and a few dates, but still, no one serious.

After college, she moved to Bend, earned her master’s in teaching and started her career as a high school Spanish teacher. Her desire to be married only intensified.  I was excited when she was asked to participate in so many of her friends’ or cousins’ weddings. Single men attend weddings. And weddings are as fine of a place to meet a guy as any. I would cling to her every word as she described the details after the wedding, waiting with bated breath for her to finally tell me that she had met someone.  But that’s where my fairy tale ended. She remained a bridesmaid, only to rejoice with the happy couple as they married and started their families, not to find one of her own.

As her mom, I tried to approach the boyfriend subject gently over the years, letting her bring it up when she was ready.  

One weekend, while we were driving on a mother-daughter outing, she confided that she surrendered. She explained that she was no longer going to pray for a husband, because God knew her heart. He knew she longed to be married and have a family. She acknowledged that marriage may not be God’s plan for her. So, she decided to let go, to hold her dream a little more loosely. She surrendered, trusting that God would do what was best for her.

At first, I thought she was giving up. Though I never said it out loud, I wondered if she was becoming cynical, as if marriage was just not for her. But I was not ready to stop praying. I could not surrender my hope that she would marry or my desire for grandchildren. Elena was approaching thirty at that time and unmarried. Which meant what exactly? That she was too smart, too intimidating, too tall, too pretty, not pretty enough, unlucky, passed over, not ready?

It meant none of those things. It meant she was almost thirty. Why did I feel the need to assign any meaning to that number?

Still, I promised myself I would stop asking about boyfriends, dating apps, or possible setups. Instead, I reassured myself that I would keep praying, silently, for God to give her the desires of her heart.

Since then, I have learned a lot about this kind of mindset.  This kind of surrender.

It is not apathy and it is not certainly not giving up. Instead, it is a way of living that emphasizes openness and vulnerability, connection and grace. Holding hopes and dreams loosely. It’s not about believing in the dream so much as believing the Giver of the dream. It’s not disconnecting from hope but rather connecting to the Giver of hope. It is not about waiting for future happiness, it’s about embracing happiness now. And it is acknowledging that I can’t always know what or when is best for me because I can’t know the future.

And this kind of surrender does not leave me helpless or give me an excuse for doing nothing. It is an active waiting place, a posture that takes every day as it comes, one day at a time.

So, what does all this have to do with wellness or weight?

A few of my patients walk through my doors married to a number on the scale as if they could not possibly be happy unless and until they weigh that number. Every month, as they approach the scale, they take a deep breath and hold it, closing their eyes, and turning their head away, not wanting to peek or see the number because if the scale is not down- by a lot -it means they have failed and nothing is working. They attach meaning to the number and it weighs them down like a ton of bricks. Sometimes they call and cancel because the scale is just too hard to face. Some give up on their dream of weight loss.

At Oregon Weight and Wellness, we do a lot of work on mindset, detaching from dreaming about “weight loss” and attaching to dreaming about “health gain.” We work on letting go of old stories of a certain number on the scale to make us happy and writing new stories of healthy habits and how good that feels. The appointments have less to do with “weighing in” and more to do with “checking in.” Every appointment, I ask about the small changes people are working on regarding food quality, movement, sleep hygiene, and stress management. And I ask how them to connect the dots and notice their body changing because of those small changes. We sometimes spend so much time talking about the changes they are making that we forget about the scale and weighing altogether.

I love hearing my patients beam with excitement. “I can cross my legs.”  “I can tie my shoes easier.” “I did not have to ask for the seat belt extender the last time I was on the plane.” “I hiked all the way up our hill with my grandkids.” “I have more energy when I eat protein for breakfast.” “I am sleeping better on the days I exercise.” “If I take a few deep breaths before starting my next meeting, it goes more smoothly.”

“And how does that make you feel?” I ask.  “Happy” is the constant reply.

When we attach happiness to the habits that form positive changes to our health, we create value around them. We want to stay consistent with these values even when we don’t feel like it. Whether we are on vacation, or at a party, or at the beginning of a new school year, we stay open and vulnerable, aware of circumstances that present new challenges, looking for strategies to stay on track. We stay connected to the support we need to persevere.  And we give ourselves grace when we feel the pressure to default to old ways. We don’t give up. We get up, dust ourselves off, and move on. Health has become our identity, not a number on a scale.

What is a healthy weight anyway?  Well, it is not necessarily a BMI less than 25 like the books want to tell you.

It’s a weight that can be maintained with a healthy relationship with food, understanding the difference between nourishing foods and fun foods. It’s a weight that supports metabolic markers, like blood pressure and blood sugar and liver functions and cholesterol. It’s a weight that allows freedom of movement. I never tell a person how much they should weigh. We figure that out together.

So let go of that number in your head that you think will bring you happiness. Embrace the habits that bring lasting change. Surrender to weigh different.