In a culture built on independence, the word surrender isn't a positive one. And although independence is quite healthy in many ways, sometimes it can mask the human need for others. In all things we need balance, and when we refuse to ever reach out for help, we can do ourselves a great deal of harm. But no harm quite so great comes from stubborn independence as that of losing our souls. The very act of repentance and a surrender of our will to be subordinate to God's can be so counter-intuitive to some that they refuse to ever do it. It is like they conjure in their minds an image of putting up a white flag and giving in to the enemy. Yet freedom, another celebrated American virtue, is not possible without surrender.

Even for those who have taken the outstretched hand of God and found freedom in Christ, we hold back a total surrender of the self. Pieces of our hearts, minds, souls and physical bodies are left under our control; we don't want to face whatever fear or work giving them up might entail. But, we know, because of the conviction of the Spirit at home within us, that we are called to a total surrender. God wants our love in heart, mind, soul and strength, no holding back.

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' Luke 10:27

If you look at the above verse, named by the Master as the Greatest Commandment, it can seem a little one-sided. But, from personal experience, I can tell you truly: with each bit of yourself you succeed in handing over, a flood of love comes back from the other side. A person fully surrendered to God is a person full of the love of God, who cannot help but spill that love onto all that he/she meets. A life lived abundantly is a life of surrender. Surrender is not only a positive word, but a word that can change your life in the most profound way possible.

In this four-part series, we will study how to surrender in love every part of the self. As Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (Jn 14:15) and the Greatest Commandment should be foremost on the list. Our surrender of will to his perfect will is not always straightforward. When considering this topic, we usually dwell on the decisions we make. But it can be more subtle. It can be in the attitude of the heart, the thoughts inundating our minds, the disposition of the soul, and the way we treat our bodies.

Emotions are a compass for the soul. They are there to communicate with us whether or not we are on a path to life or death. Whether love or hate, peace or fear, hope or despair, they are expressing to us the depravity or health of our souls. We have a natural desire to be rid of negative emotions and seek out what would cause the positive ones--what is commonly described as the pursuit of happiness. And because of this, we have a chance at discovering God, the origin of good. Emotions, like much of creation, help us to achieve the purpose for which we were all created: unity with God.

Unfortunately, emotions get little respect in this society that has long been driven by logic and the left brain. They are considered almost as if they were a pest; like something to eradicate. The impression can be left that they have no use except to disrupt what would otherwise be a smooth-sailing life.

My daughter recently came to me with overwhelming emotions and an inability to deal with them. In trying to help her process them, I gave her this analogy:

Consider emotions to be like a classroom full of middle-schoolers--the most emotional creatures imaginable--and you are their teacher.  One by one they start to raise their hands, wanting to be heard. But there's not much time left and you want to get finished with your lesson. You are trying to ignore them.

• Fear wants to tell you she's not sure she can remember all this for the test.
• Anger needs you to know that the test is unfair.
• Urgency wants to go to the bathroom.
• Impatience wants to know what time they can all go home.
• Frustration feels like he will never understand what you're saying.
• Boredom wishes you'd talk about something interesting.
• Bitterness is still upset about the grade you gave her last time.
• And Hatred can't stand school to begin with.

Attempting to ignore all the upraised hands is futile. The more emotions are ignored, the harder it is to deal with everyday life. They get piled up and backlogged, and eventually cause some kind of breakdown--whether it is mental or physical. If the heart cannot be heard, its influence will leak over into a part of you which you cannot ignore. In the end, we have to deal with our emotions.
 
Society gives us self-help books, meditative techniques, psychologists, drugs, etc, to help us feel better about our emotions.  And it encourages ignoring the emotions by giving us an endless array of distractions on the television, computer, phones, tablets, etc.  Often people will fall into addictions to try and assuage their ailing hearts: drugs, alcohol, sex, video games… the list goes on and on. But like Paul said of love in 2 Corinthians 12:31, "And now I will show you the most excellent way."

Stop what you are doing for a minute and let each have their say, one by one.  And then, as you are hearing them out, make an offering of them to God.

I taught my daughter this meditation to help her deal with her overwhelming emotions:

It is important to let go of thoughts about the emotion's origin. When we get wrapped up in such thoughts, they generate more of the emotion we are trying to hear out. Thoughts are more capable of giving birth to negative emotions than anything else. There is a time and a place for talking things out so that you can avoid the situations that will cause more of the negative emotion. But that is not the exercise we are attempting here. We just want our emotions to have a voice so that they can be dissolved.

Some emotions are strong and deeply rooted. They may be from traumatic past experiences or long-held resentments and sadness. It may take more than one session like this for them to pass. But doing this for even a couple of minutes a day will eventually get you through them.

God wants us to willingly share with him how we feel. He knows all things, but he still desires us to share with him because we are his children. If one of your own children was never willing to share with you their feelings, would you not consider that relationship to be fundamentally broken? But we have a God who is not only a willing listener, but a healer of hearts.
So lay bare your heart before the Lord. As Proverbs 38:8-9 puts it:

And again in Romans 8:26:

And rest in the assurance that a surrender of the heart to God's love will result in healing, peace and joy.

Downward Facing Dog, or just Down Dog, is another foundational yoga pose. From the base of this posture, the yogi transitions to many others. Done often and properly, it can even be a resting pose.

It brings oxygen to the brain and increased blood flow to the body. It elongates the neck and spine. The hamstrings, calves and Achilles tendon gain flexibility in this pose. The wrists, arms, shoulders and abs gain strength.

• Begin in a standing Forward Fold. Bend your knees, placing your hands on the mat.
• Step back about four feet. You should look like a tent or an upside-down letter "V".
• Line up the index fingers so they are parallel to the sides of your mat. This will assist you in turning the eyes of the elbows forward. Spread your fingers wide and distribute your weight on the four corners of your hand. Have straight arms but don't lock the elbows.
• Press the mat away from you and lower your shoulders, opening the heart towards the floor. Let your arms and torso be on the same plane.
• Maintain a flat back, hinging at the hip crease. It is more important to have a flat back than to have straight legs or heels touching the floor.
• Knit your ribs together, bringing in your belly like you are tightening a corset.
• Press your thighs back without locking the knees.
• Let your head be a natural extension of the spine, on the same plane as the torso/arms. This allows you to extend the crown of the head forward to elongate the neck. Another option is to let the head hang, and shake it gently yes and no.
• Breathe deeply and steadily, in and out through the nose.

• Begin in Plank Pose.
• Place one hand under your face, directly in the center of the mat. Spread your fingers wide and distribute your weight on a four corners of the hand.
• Lift your other hand towards the sky. Don't collapse the bottom shoulder.
• Turn over to the side, balancing on the blade of the lower foot.
• Concentrate on lifting the top hip skyward.
• Breathe.

A typical modification for this pose is to put one knee on the floor. This is excellent for those who do not yet have the strength for a full Side Plank.

In order to properly tell the story of my journey to becoming an "Evangelical Catholic", I need to add in here an additional element.

Underlying the church hopping my husband and I did for ten years was some deep work God was doing in the secret places of my heart. You see, I had a problem with entitlement. After my Catholic first-confession, when I first experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, I knew I wanted to fully belong to God. But I didn't like the idea of being God's servant. I felt like servanthood and - even worse - slavery were beneath me. I would hear others describe having a servant's heart, and a part of me would cringe. The title of God's Adopted Daughter or the Princess of the King I could embrace fully. But a servant? A slave? I really didn't want to get my hands that dirty.

Fortunately, the Spirit convicted me about this enough that I repented of my attitude and asked God to help me change it. How did he respond?

He sent me into the desert.


Instead of forty days, I stayed ten years (I'm a slow learner). My spiritual experiences all but dried up, and my heart languished under the dry and unforgiving atmostphere. Doubts invaded; depression set in. I felt like the psalmist in Psalm 42: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

That said, let us return to the main story. Ten years had passed, and my husband and I had finally quit church hopping and weren't attending church anymore.


Then, one Sunday morning, I asked him if he wanted to try again.  I suggested we try a non-Catholic church.  The idea was neither new nor unknown to us.  Over many years with my husband, he would have us do a double-dip on Sunday.  We would go to Catholic mass, and then attend a service from some arbitrary Protestant church.  His purpose was to immerse himself in the mind-set of Protestants, to help understand why there was so much strife between Catholics and Protestants.  In the past, these non-Catholic experiences had two major themes: give us money, and Catholicism is evil...right down to condemning the use of stained-glass windows and candles.


Obviously my husband held no optimism about the idea.  He agreed we could try an arbitrary church, but he warned me that whatever place we visited would assuredly be a "no repeat."


So I sat down at my computer, went to Google Maps, and typed in "Church, 85050". Up popped a list of churches, and one of them read "Desert Springs Bible Church." For someone coming out of the desert, it sounded like a much needed drink of water. It had a website, so I clicked on it. I asked Brent about going there, and he simply requested that they don't have obvious signs of anti-Catholicism.


I scoured that website. I read every article. The message I kept recieving was one of loving us where we were, not of trying to push us to change. That didn't mean there wasn't an element of anti-Catholicism that wasn't apparent on the surface, but we decided to give it a try.
Words cannot explain the vastness of the gap between what we had been experiencing the past ten years and what we experienced that Sunday at DSBC. The Christ-centered focus of the message we received overwhelmed us from every angle.  In the sermon, in the music, and in the people.  We came in starving, we came out filled. We literally didn't want to leave the physical premises of the church grounds.


Indeed, we sat outside on the patio chairs with a happy giddiness until they were locking up the place. We wanted to pitch a tent and live there:

Our fears of someone trying to "convert" us were lessened, and we came back a second Sunday. And then a third.  By the fourth Sunday of success, my husband was beginning to think it was not just "luck" that this little church was targeting our hearts so well.

 
That was April 2008. Never once while we attended there did the bible church suggest Catholicism or its doctrines are evil.  They even casually reference Mother Teresa as a Christian model. Instead of bashing our heritage or life experiences, they have been constant in telling us that Jesus is the answer; our background is irrelevant.  When they said they'd take us as we are, they meant it.


I asked my husband if we were now Evangelicals, or Protestants. He said no, we remain Catholic because the usual distinction between Catholics and Protestants, the doctrine, was not the issue for us. The intent is what matters, and we as Catholics share this holy intent with the Evangelicals with whom we have made a spiritual home. 


With a nod to our unusual circumstances, my husband calls himself a Catholic Nomad. I say I'm an Evangelical Catholic. Call us what you will, but we are not being two-faced when we "test everything, keeping what is good" (1st Thess 5:21).  


And what happened to my unwillingness to serve my God? That first Sunday at Desert Springs I begged him to be his slave, if he would just grant that I could never part from him again.


I live to serve him. Now I work in Christian ministry, having been called to teach Christian Yoga. I have never led such an abundant life, with such a heart of thanksgiving. To serve the Lord is to find happiness.


God is freedom, God is joy, and if he has you in a desert right now, do not despair. If there's anything I'm sure of its this: He knows what he's doing. Rest in that. Amen, JESUS!!

Definitely a power house pose, Plank is great work for the transverse abs -- your primary posture muscles. It also strengthens the front of the legs, arms (if you don't lock your elbows), and shoulders.

• Begin in a table top position, on your hands and knees.
• Place your hands directly under your shoulders. Turn the eyes of the elbows forward. Don't lock the elbows.
• Step the feet back and straighten the legs.
• Lower the hips until your torso is on the same plane as your legs, making you look like a plank of wood.
• Make sure you are not dumping your weight into the shoulders. Engage them instead.
• Engage and lift in the belly.
• Look down at the mat between your hands. Breathe.

Forward fold turns the practitioner inward and promotes relaxation. The intense compression then release of the digestive organs allows for a fresh flood of blood and a loosening and release of toxins into the blood stream. It also helps move things along through the intestines. It takes the pressure off of the lower spine and elongates the back, often relieving pain. Uttanasana brings blood and oxygen to the brain. And, of course, it brings more flexibility to the hamstrings.

• Begin in Mountain Pose.
• Keeping a straight back, fold forward hinging at the hips.
• Inhale, coming halfway up, as pictured below. Elongate the spine by bringing the crown of the head forward and tailbone back.
• Press your lower ribs back and cave in your belly as you exhale and fold again. 

It is not necessary to fold completely in half with straight legs. Far more important is to maintain a flat back. If that means you have to bend your knees because there is not enough space in the hamstrings, then by all means bend your knees.  

After my conversion to Catholicism, I went through a honeymoon period in my faith. The Holy Spirit was content to woo me with many blissful and mystical experiences. My Father God was elated every time his baby daughter looked his way, and let her know. I was avidly looking for opportunities to meditate and pray. In my spare time, I composed prayers and spiritual writings out of an outflowing of adoration for Jesus that I could not contain.

At the time, my boyfriend and I were attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help Byzantine Catholic Church. It was the ideal place for someone new to the Catholic faith to gain understanding, since the pastor's heart was entirely given over to the work of the Lord. His name was Father Chris, and despite his many ailments, which usually kept him wheel-chair bound, when he got behind the pulpit to preach on Sunday morning he inspired, challenged, educated, admonished and conveyed the love of Christ to his parishioners. His caring leadership was a blessing to everyone he encountered, and his endurance of the pain that wracked his body was honorable and awe-inspiring in a Pauline sort of way.

A couple of years after converting, Brent and I were married. Because he was a Software Engineer and Albuquerque was not exactly a technology town, we ended up taking a job that moved us out of New Mexico. That also meant leaving Our Lady of Perpetual Help behind. And it was there that the trouble began for me.

Before continuing, I must caution you. I wish only to honestly tell my experience of what took place, and not to attack anyone. If you are Catholic, look at the following as an opportunity for ecclesiastic introspection. If you are not, please do not judge. Sin is present in every church and every denomination, because humans are present. Rather, take these stories as an opportunity to discern. Pray for those who are finding it hard to see God for all the distractions within the body of Christ. Pray that they find a place to worship where they can be fed and grow, and where they can reach out and serve. With the compassion and understanding of our Master, read on.

With our move to Colorado Springs, my husband and I began an arduous spiritual journey, searching for the right church. My Holy Spirit experiences seemed to dry up, and I found myself in the desert of my faith walk. This journey lasted ten long years, and through it all we longed for a drink of God's Spirit, or any sign that he was still out there.

Our first church in Colorado Springs was a Byzantine Catholic mission church.  It had the form of prayer we preferred, but the "why" of the worship had been misplaced.  The minister was endlessly wishing he was elsewhere, and the congregation was preoccupied with procedures and rubrics rather than the Gospel.  We finally were forced to make another choice, because the mission closed after several months. 

The next church parish we attended was Roman Catholic.  It loved to emphasize how "We are the body of Christ!" At first, this was a message that hit home and reminded all present how they need to actively reach out and play their role as a member of that body. But it began to get a little weird when months went by and the same message was repeated, without the actual person of Christ ever being mentioned. Were they ever going to talk about Jesus? Did the pastor forget that that body he was so fond of mentioning had a head? I caught on that the real point of the message in their eyes was that everyone should volunteer their time, talent and treasure to their church.

Things took a really sour turn one Sunday morning when it was time for the Gospel reading. The Gospel is a sacred part of the mass, and Catholics hold the reading in reverence. But, for some odd reason, as the lector started to read, a kid with a big boom box blasting music was making his way down one aisle. My husband got up to tell him to stop when we noticed a woman talking loudly on her phone, pacing around before the pulpit. Then, next to the sanctuary up front, we saw a big screen TV, and a kid playing a noisy video game.  The video game audio was piped into the church's sound system - as if the boom box wasn't loud enough.  It became clear that this was a skit to teach us how life distracts us from God. But it was ill-timed. If there is one thing Catholics understand, it is reverence for the things of God. The Gospel reading is too sacred to mar with the kitsch of a skit. My husband had us get up and walk out.

That event caused us never to return to that church. Instead, we hopped from parish to parish, hoping to find one that felt more like home. What we found was that no church wanted to preach as if Jesus and his resurrection were real. They wanted to talk about whatever was lighthearted and trivial, whatever was sure not to offend. And they seemed to think the mass needed fixing. It was much too old-fashioned, and so they endlessly needed to spruce it up. Furthermore, priest after priest gave off the impression that they weren't the ones running the place. They had given their leadership role to a committee of lay people.  These lay ministers clearly had no education about the liturgy and worship which they were butchering.

It was then that I became aware of an internal battle going on within the American Catholic Church between those of a more liberal mindset and those who were conservative. The liberals wanted married priests, women priests, and an endlessly re-invented, better mass. One with a rock band. They wanted to look and act more Protestant. The conservatives wanted their Latin mass back, but if they couldn't have it, at least they didn't want to mess with the traditional Irish sweet-song hymns and the general respect for the sacredness of the mass. This is an over-generalization, of course, but it was these kinds of attitudes we kept encountering. Everyone was more interested in pushing on the Church their personal agendas rather than growing in or spreading the Gospel. They thought that if they could just have it their way, the people leaving the Catholic church in droves would come running home.

What those people who left needed was Jesus. They couldn't find him in the Catholic church, so they left. If the Protestants are attracting huge numbers, it's not because of a great band and more modern service. That might get a person in the door initially, but what holds them there is when they encounter the Living God. Preach Jesus, and they will come! In fact, what I found to be so confusing was that a perfect opportunity to share the Gospel arose every mass -- after the Gospel reading! But time and again each priest would not even mention the words just read in scripture, nor related concepts, nor a sign of any personal faith in Christ. They'd talk about the crazy weather we were having or the latest Cosmopolitan article, but never the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Eventually, life events took us from Colorado Springs to Phoenix, Arizona. We began to attend another Roman Catholic church there, but encountered the same watered-down, irrelevant message as we had in the previous ones.

The only respite came from a guest priest, Father Nacho, who would sometimes say mass.  Every once in a while, you encounter a Spirit-filled person whose very being emanates the triune God. This visiting priest was that way.  "A prophet," my husband called him.  He once announced at mass "I am hearing complaints that I preach the Gospel too often, but I say, I will not cease to preach it because you still don't understand it!"

We looked forward to the Sundays when he would preach, because we knew we'd come away from mass profoundly touched by the wisdom, mystery, and power of God. But, as all guests do, this priest left within the year. And because we had no other cause to stay, and in fact felt very disconnected from that community, we looked for a church home elsewhere. Said poetically, the color gray tends not to attract. True, it won't offend, but neither will it attract. It stands for nothing.

By this time we were experiencing a crisis of faith.  We desperately needed life-support from a pastor who understood our spiritual needs. We thought maybe it was time to try the Byzantine Catholic Church in Phoenix.  Perhaps it would give us a home, since our first positive encounter with Catholicism had been at a Byzantine church. Roman Catholicism in the Southwest had not fed us, so perhaps the difference lay in which Catholic rite you attended (for an explanation of Catholic rites, click here.)  

Instead, we found a church that cared more about the importance of upholding their cultural tradition than the message of Christ.  Our crisis need for our faith to be fed was met with the pastor starting every single homily with a bazooka joke.  My husband said that it was slowly turning his faith into a joke.  

Still, we tried to reach out to this community. At one point, I invited every young family there to a children's cookie decorating party. I thought it would be a good way to fellowship with them. But Catholics are notorious for avoiding fellowship, and apparently these Catholics were no different from their Roman counterparts. Not one of my many invited families showed. I ended up calling in all of the neighborhood kids, and made a party of it anyway.  I couldn't help but think of the wedding parable:

My husband's disillusion was intensifying.  Absent the Gospel message, he just couldn't stand to hear one more joke from the pulpit. I don't think it normally would have been a problem, but the accumulation of negative experiences was beginning to get to him.

This time, we attended a Melkite Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this church was caught up in the lie of a works-based salvation. One memorable homily was on the parable of the wedding feast already mentioned above.  The focus this time was on verses 11-12 which, if you recall, had one guest thrown out of the feast to "wailing and gnashing of teeth" because he had not worn the correct wedding garment. Well, the deacon was giving this particular homily, and explained how it meant that if you didn't wear a coat and tie to church, you were in grave sin. My husband later wondered aloud about how poor people obviously do not have enough money to spend time with God.

But the final nail on the coffin of us attending this particular Melkite Church came one Sunday when a woman in the front pew collapsed. She had been in a horrible car accident just a few weeks earlier, in which her husband had been killed. Though over 90% of her aorta was severed, they managed to save her life. So, to see her collapse was a cause for great concern. Her family in the pew around her quickly gathered near, and talking was going on. Everyone was alarmed. What did the priest do?

Well, her collapse had interrupted his homily. He faced away, and silently stared out a window while rocking back and forth on his heels.  This lasted long enough for an ambulance to arrive and take her away.  As the stretcher started to move down the aisle, he turned back to the congregation and said "Isn't it funny how I was teaching on patience, and here we are, having to be patient?"

No prayers were offered for her as she was wheeled out. Not one word of concern, nor even a glance was afforded her. For someone trying to be God's representative on Earth, this priest lacked the compassion of Christ so much that he couldn't be troubled by the incident in the least.

It should not surprise you that this started a period where we didn't go to church at all. My husband began to repeat the same jaded statement, "You know, we live on Mars." And when you'd ask him why, he'd say, "There's no churches on Mars, so we must be on Mars."

At first, our motivation for staying home was to save our children for growing up in an environment which called itself Christian, but preached something else. We thought they'd grow up to say "If this is Christianity, I don't want to be Christian."  Ironic that to preserve our children in the Christian faith, it was necessary to prevent them from going to church.

Our intermittent church attendance was finally punctuated with one last dire church experience.  Based on a recommendation, we attended yet another new Roman Catholic parish. We only lasted four Sundays. This new church had a tradition of waving their fists in the air during the Alleluia hymn - a slower version of the Arsenio Hall one-handed fist pump. We thought it was a bit strange and unreserved for Catholics to be doing such a thing, but we simply tried to ignore it. That worked until the Sunday when the priest made the whole topic of his homily about the fist pumping. He told his parishioners that people who refused to do the fist pumps were "people of fear." He called them, that is us, "Sadducees."  My husband was very offended at the message, and actually shouted out at the end of the homily "Don't call us Sadducees!"

In three separate and private conversations with that priest after the mass and in the days that followed, my husband was seeking an apology from the priest. The priest, in turn, wanted nothing except for my husband to understand the gravity of the crime he committed by speaking up during mass.  

My husband noted that the notion of Jesus over-turning the tables of the money-changers at church was entirely lost on this pastor. We stopped attending mass.

We worried for our faith. My husband struggled with believing in a God who didn't seem to be active in his own church. He thought maybe he was becoming an agnostic. Meanwhile, I began to sense the presence of God in yoga class and spent my time with him there. My whole yoga routine became worship of Jesus. In this way, the Holy Spirit seemed to be saying, "I am still here, do not be discouraged."

God sometimes chooses the strangest tools to bring you to where he wants you to go. For us, when he was ready to give us the church home we had been seeking for ten years, he used...

Google.