Surrender to Love

At the start of 2024, I ended my nearly ten-year marriage—and accidentally fell in love.

And it wasn’t a rebound kind of love. Not the kind born of desperation or fear. And it definitely wasn’t one I was looking for. It was unexpected, startling even—because it felt like a first encounter with love itself. A remembering. An energy. A frequency. The sensation of safety in my body. The kind of love you recognize when you return to presence.

This past year has been an initiation into mirrors. I’ve learned that we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. Every person who enters our life is a sliver of us, a reflection of God in a different disguise.

I still don’t know if I first fell in love with him, which then mirrored back a love I was discovering for myself—or if I fell in love with myself, and he simply reflected it. But soon after the beauty came the unveiling: I saw the old pattern. The chasing. The hustling. The striving. The ancient wound of unworthiness. That voice that said: If I love enough, if I’m beautiful enough, if I’m calm enough, maybe you’ll choose me.

I recognized pretty early on that I had collided with this man with one foot still in the old story and one foot in the new.

And then came the moment I was asked—perhaps by him, but really by God—to let him go.

I can’t tell you how much it hurt. The agony it stirred. The heartache it unearthed. To release him felt like releasing the very first taste of what love could be. The very first glimpse of how safe, how beautiful, how intimate partnership might feel when it is rooted in presence. To taste it once, only to be asked to let it go—it felt impossible.

I can’t tell you how many times I landed on the floor of my kitchen or the floor of my den. How many times I lay face-down, crying until I thought I had no tears left. Wailing. Screaming. Dying a little death each time. And then, another day would arrive, and with it, more tears.

I realized I was being taught to stay—with the abandonment, the rejection, the ache of unworthiness. To stay with every part of me that wanted to run. Over and over again, I stayed. And over and over again, something old died.

The pattern was breaking.

It was surrender, but a surrender unlike anything I had known before.

Little by little, as I laid everything down, I noticed something rising. A stillness. A presence. A love that did not depend on anyone choosing me, staying with me, or validating me.

The scripture I grew up hearing—Perfect love casts out fear—suddenly made sense. For years, I thought I was disqualified from love because I sure didn’t feel very patient or kind, because my nervous system was dysregulated and I couldn’t stop striving. But now I see: perfect love isn’t about being flawless. Perfect love is perfect presence. And when your nervous system finds regulation, presence dissolves fear.

Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter.

- A Course in Miracles

A few nights ago, I woke at three a.m., came downstairs, and lay again on the floor. This time, there were almost no tears left. Not because I stopped loving him. Not because I didn’t miss him. But because the longing that once came from fear, scarcity, and rejection had dissolved.

All that remained was one prayer: I’m here now.

I realized that had been my prayer all along, even when I didn’t have words for it. To come into presence. To discover that when you have presence, you already have everything.

So I got up off the floor, made myself a snack at 4:30 in the morning, smiled a big smile, and then went back to bed.

Because I think I’m ready now. Ready to trust. To trust the river. To trust that whatever—and whomever—is meant for me will find me. Not because I chase, but because I stay.

And because love always meets me here. Now.

And maybe that’s the irony of surrender: sometimes you have to burn the whole story down. Let everything die—every old pattern, every old script, every piece of what no longer serves. Only then can the new story rise. Only then can new life blossom.

Sometimes the holiest invitation is to let it all go. To set fire to what is finished. To trust that the ashes are not the end, but the soil of what’s next.