I started this morning kneeling beside my bed in prayer. I don’t normally do that. I usually pray sitting upright on my couch. But a friend had recently mentioned a prayerful moment she’d had on her knees beside her bed, and it inspired me, I guess.

Since January 2014, Thursdays have ritually been a day focused on pursuing hope and clarity through surrender, though rarely is the focus what I’d desire it to be. Thus, I often question its effectiveness. But today is a new Thursday. So down to my bedside I went, with my journal in hand.

“Father, with open hands,” I wrote. “I surrender:”

And I wrote out the following list:

• My frustrations with/resentment toward others who have impacted my life and currently don’t live up to my expectations–particularly, relationally.
• My cravings for relational companionship and sexual intimacy with another woman. Particularly, my wife.
• The ministry path you’ve purposed for me. The fear of never getting it started. The confusion of knowing where to go with it.
• The direction of where to attend church–one that is as non-toxic as humanly possible.
• The pain of rejection from people I care about.
• The idle distractions of entertainment (sports-obsession) that I’ve used to balm my pain.

I turned around toward the bookshelf behind me, remembering as I wrote “with open hands,” that I own a book with that same title, written by Henri Nouwen. The first page I turned to said this:

You still feel bitter because people weren’t grateful for something you gave them: you still feel jealous of those who are better paid than you are; you still want to take revenge on someone who didn’t respect you; you are still disappointed that you received no letter, still angry because someone didn’t smile when you walked by. You live through it, you live along with it as though it doesn’t really bother you…until the moment when you want to pray. Then everything returns: the bitterness, the hate, the jealousy, the disappointment, and the desire for revenge. But these feelings are not just there; you clutch them in your hands as if they were treasures you don’t want to let go. You sit wallowing in all that old sourness as if you couldn’t do without them, as if, in giving them up, you would lose your very self.

Detachment is often understood as letting loose of what is attractive. But it sometimes also requires letting go of what is repulsive. You can indeed become attached to dark forces such as resentment and hatred. As long as you seek retaliation, you cling to your own past. Sometimes it seems as though you might lose yourself along with your revenge and hate–so you stand there with balled-up fists, closed to the other who wants to heal you.

When you want to pray, then, the first question is: How do I open my closed hands? Certainly not by violence. Nor by a forced decision. Perhaps you can find your way to prayer by carefully listening to the words the angel spoke to Zechariah, Mary, the shepherds, and the women at the tomb: “Don’t be afraid.” Don’t be afraid of the One who wants to enter your most intimate space and invite you to let go of what you are clinging to so anxiously. Don’t be afraid to show the clammy coin which will buy you so little anyway. Don’t be afraid to offer your hate, bitterness, and disappointment to the One who is love and only love. Even if you know you have little to show, don’t be afraid to let it be seen.

Each time you dare to let go and to surrender one of those many fears, your hand opens a little and your palms spread out in a gesture of receiving. You must be patient, of course, very patient until your hands are completely open.

It is a long spiritual journey of trust, for behind each fist another one is hiding, and sometimes the process seems endless. Much has happened in your life to make all those fists, and at any hour of the day or night you might find yourself clenching your fists again out of fear.

Maybe someone will say to you, “You have to forgive yourself.” But that isn’t possible. What is possible is to open your hands without fear, so that the One who loves you can blow your sins away. Then the coins you considered indispensable for your life prove to be little more than light dust which a soft breeze will whirl away, leaving only a grin or a chuckle behind. Then you feel a bit of new freedom and praying becomes a joy, a spontaneous reaction to the world and the people around you. Praying then becomes effortless, inspired and lively, or peaceful and quiet. When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

Father, it seems like such a simple easy task to just let go of inconvenient emotional weight like resentment and fear, yet I hold onto these things as if they’re a literal lifeline. Either I simply don’t know how or I’m actually afraid to open my clenched fists. As if I don’t know who I’ll be when I have nothing left to hold on to. Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands, Lord? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not the weight I carry, but what you want to give me. And what you want to give me is freedom through your unconditional, never-ending love.