The Day I Stopped Trying So Hard

Two discoveries came to me far later in life than I wish they had.

The first was meditation.

The second was surrender.

Looking back, I had tasted both when I was younger, but I had not yet learned to live inside them. They were experiences, not a way of life. And there is a world of difference between visiting something occasionally and allowing it to become the atmosphere in which you live.

That difference is the difference between doing and being.

Around 2006, I began learning what we then called listening prayer. It was a simple practice of becoming quiet, letting the constant chatter of my mind settle, and allowing God to meet me in the silence rather than trying to manufacture an experience.

Over the years, I learned different contemplative practices, but something even more important happened.

Meditation stopped being something I did.

It became someone I was becoming.

Eventually, I realized that contemplation is not confined to a chair, a quiet room, or twenty minutes in the morning. It becomes a posture of the heart you carry into every conversation, every decision, every disappointment, and every joy.

I've often wondered if this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he urged us to "pray without ceasing."

Not endless words.

Not constant religious activity.

Simply living with an awakened awareness of God's presence.

Just being.

Today I describe that journey in a different language.

I call it returning to your Soulprint, the place where your body, mind, and spirit begin to live together again as one whole person. The person God created before fear, performance, and ego taught you to become someone else.

Ironically, I started life wanting to write.

I went to journalism school because words fascinated me. At one point, I seriously considered seminary because I believed God might be calling me into ministry.

Neither path unfolded the way I expected.

Instead, life happened.

I spent decades working harder, accomplishing more, building businesses, raising a wonderful family, and chasing responsibilities that seemed important at the time.

There were genuine successes.

There were also painful failures.

If I'm honest, the failures taught me far more than the victories ever did.

Success often confirms the image we have of ourselves.

Failure exposes the person beneath the image.

When everything is going well, it's surprisingly easy to avoid yourself. Comfort has a way of hiding the places where we still need healing. But setbacks strip away the masks. They reveal our fears, our insecurities, our need to control, and all the clever ways the ego tries to protect itself.

The real you always appears when life refuses to cooperate.

Then something unexpected happened.

Around the age of seventy, the words returned.

Not a few words.

Thousands of them.

Books began flowing almost faster than I could write them. Essays arrived in the middle of the night. Ideas appeared during walks, while driving, while sitting quietly with a cup of coffee.

People often ask me what changed.

The answer is surprisingly simple.

I surrendered.

Not perfectly.

Not once and for all.

But deeply enough that something inside me shifted.

My ego no longer occupied the center of the room.

My soul did.

Don't misunderstand me.

I still have an ego.

It still has blind spots.

It still carries fears.

It still invents ridiculous strategies for self-protection.

The difference is that I can see it now.

And once you see it, it no longer has quite the same power over you.

Something else changed as well.

My faith expanded.

I stopped seeing people in neat categories.

I became more aware of my own prejudices, assumptions, and inherited beliefs. Some of them still linger, but awareness itself is a gift. What remains hidden cannot be transformed.

The world also became infinitely more interesting.

For years, I had viewed life through the narrow black-and-white lens that religion sometimes encourages. Everything had to fit into tidy boxes.

Then surrender introduced me to color.

Mystery.

Wonder.

Grace.

Nuance.

People became stories instead of labels.

Questions became invitations instead of threats.

Even Scripture opened in ways I had never imagined.

Perhaps that is why I continue to write.

Not because I have mastered these things.

I haven't.

Not because I have arrived.

I certainly haven't.

I write because surrender taught me how to see.

And once you begin seeing, you cannot help but invite others to look with you.

The older I become, the less interested I am in perfection.

Perfection has never healed a marriage.

Perfection has never restored a friendship.

Perfection has never taught someone how to forgive.

Love has.

Grace has.

Relationships have.

Presence has.

That is the path I now try to walk.

The path of becoming instead of proving.

The path of surrender instead of striving.

The path of returning, day by day, to the person God imagined before I spent a lifetime trying to become someone else.

Perhaps that is the deepest invitation of the Soulprint journey.

Not to become a better version of your ego.

But to become your truest self.

And maybe, just maybe, that has been God's invitation all along.

And here's the beautiful truth: God has given each of us the gift of free will, the freedom to awaken, to see, and to choose. If we dare ourselves to surrender, we can become the very person God created us to be - and live in a world of color.  

God is always trying to write your story.  Stop stealing the pen.