Why Surrendering your Marriage Problems to Spirit is a Misunderstood and often Overlooked Secret in Saving Your Marriage

Some people think that surrendering your marriage problems to Spirit means "giving up" on your marriage and letting Spirit wreck havoc on your life by taking your partner away from you. They fear surrendering to Spirit means losing control. That is not what surrendering to Spirit is about.

We do our best in any given situation, but sometimes our best may not enough. Or a problem just seems too big and you have tried everything in your power to resolve it but nothing seems to work. Or you might be confronting a problem head on with the wrong solution. Or maybe what you think the real problem is, isn't. Sometimes you are not sure what to do and what not to do to fix your marriage. It is at times like these that you can simply surrender your problems to Spirit.

Q: So, what happens when you surrender your marriage problems to Spirit?

A: You allow room for Spirit to take over and let your ego get out of the way. Your ego (that focuses on differences, winning at all costs, conflict, power struggles etc) was responsible for the collapse of your marriage in the first place! When you surrender, you let go of your ego and you allow Grace to fill you and consequently, you allow room for miracles in your marriage. Surrendering is really about surrendering your ego to Spirit. When you surrender, your ego gets out of the way, enabling Spirit and you to merge as one.

ALL the times I threw my hands up to heaven and surrendered, the situation worked out to be far better than I had ever envisioned. It is no wonder that the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous programs, is to surrender to God the addiction itself.
 

- I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, "Go throw yourself into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. - Mark 11:23

Ever heard the story about Oprah Winfrey and The Color Purple? She wanted to land a role in the movie really badly. Even though Oprah had never acted before, Quincy Jones arranged for her to audition for the role of Celie's strong-willed daughter-in-law. It was more than she had even prayed for -- a real part in the movie. But after the audition, Oprah heard nothing for months, and blamed her weight. She then books into a weight loss retreat hoping to shed a few pounds, absolutely hating herself for carrying all that weight in the meantime. She says, “And I realized at that time that my obsession had gotten the best of me. I'd never wanted anything more than I wanted to be in “The Color Purple.” Never. And it was life changing for me because I decided I had to let it go. So I go out on the track by myself. It's cold. It's raining. I'm alone running around the track. And I start asking “God, dear God, just like Celie. Please help me to let it go so that I can move on with my life.” And I start singing, “I surrender all. I surrender all.” But just when Oprah was letting go, she received a phone call. It was the movie's director, Steven Spielberg. She eventually got the part, without having to shed a single pound, for the role required her to be exactly how she was.

Oprah adds, "'I Surrender All' is one of my favorite songs. … And it lives in my spirit because I try to surrender everything - I surrender my life, I surrender my doings, I surrender my experiences - because I know that God can dream a bigger dream than we can dream for ourselves.”

Lastly, bear in mind that it is all right for you to want a goal, but you must not need it. Needing carries with it the energy of craving and addiction, and that will actually impede you from getting what you desire. Surrendering is about detaching fully from something, after you have given your best. It is only when you detach from it fully that you can hand it over in its entirety to the hands of Spirit. There is no such thing as a half-hearted surrender to Spirit. Detaching requires 100% trust. You need to surrender from the depths of your soul, and only then will you fully ease into Grace.

A priest once related the following story to me to explain the meaning of surrender. A peasant women who had her clothes disrobed by hooligans, called on for God’s help. Nothing happened. Finally seeing that she was getting to the tail end of her robe, she threw her hands up entirely in the air in surrender and asked for God’s help. This time, in answer to her prayers, God kept adding material to her robe, so that the hooligans were unable to disrobe her no matter how long they kept at it. They stopped when one of them eventually died of exhaustion. God later revealed to her why he did not answer her first cries – she was holding on tightly to her robe then, as she called out God's name.

How can you tell if you have truly surrendered? If you feel deep inner peace after surrendering, then you have truly surrendered. If you feel fear, then your ego is trying to hang on.