We hear the word surrender a lot in AA. Like a lot. It gets thrown around in meetings, readings, conversations. “You’ve got to surrender.” “I finally surrendered.” “He hasn’t surrendered yet.” But what are we actually surrendering? Most of the time the answer is “our will.” That sounds right, but what does that even mean?
The word surrender comes from the Old French surrendre, meaning to give up or hand over. Break it down further, sur means over, and rendre means to give back or return. So surrender literally means to hand something over, to give it back. Not destroy it. Not erase it. Not pretend it doesn’t exist. Give it back. So what have we been holding onto so tightly that needs to be handed over?
Our opinions. Our judgments. The way we’ve been telling the story. We’ve had such a tight grip on the stories from our Fifth Step that they feel like reality, not just something that happened but something that means something about us and everyone else. Those interpretations have been shaping our character long before we ever got to AA.
So now it’s time to loosen the grip and start surrendering our judgment of what happened, becoming willing to see it another way. Not rewriting history, but letting go of the meaning we’ve been attaching to it. Doing that on our own is damn near impossible, which is why it helps to get an outside, non-biased view. Someone in AA who’s been there, who can hear it and see what we can’t.
And then we get to work. One story at a time. One judgment at a time. We start handing them over, looking for what’s underneath, so something real can actually change.
What am I still holding onto that I need to hand over?
