Surrender---Using A God Box

I recently read an article called How To Eliminate Worry written by Andrea Hess and found at http://www.empoweredsoul.com/blog/?p=169 .


I left a comment:
"Many years ago, a friend told me about her God Box. You make or use any box of your choice. You can decorate it all pretty or leave it plain. Mine was actually a metal can that I had and liked. What do you do with the box? When you have something that worries you, write it on a piece of paper. Fold the paper and put it in your God Box. Then you let go and ask God to handle it. At the end of the year, you get your God Box and read all of the pieces of paper that are in the Box. You will be surprised at how many are no longer problems simply because you let go of them and let God handle the problem."


Andrea's comment back to me:
"Patricia - I love that image of a 'God Box.' What I always am concerned about, though, is that fine line between appropriate surrender, and abdicating our responsibility as Creator of our experience. Any thoughts?"


My comment, in answer to Andrea's question:
"Andrea, I do believe in taking the appropriate action on my part before putting my problem in the God Box. I believe in taking responsibility for being a Co-Creator (with God) of my reality. Putting something in my God Box is so that I give God the space to do his part rather than worrying it to death and creating the opposite of what I want. The God Box gets ego out of the way. It stops any obessive behaviors from getting out of hand. Worry just makes the situation worse. Once it goes in the God Box, I am able to stop the worry. First, I do my part, then I turn it over to God for the results."


That is the end of my comments with Andrea. I did tell her that I would be doing this article. I have intended to do it for some time. This is one gift that I would like to share with my readers that was given to me by my friend Kathy White. Some of you have read about Kathy and may remember her name from one of my early articles called The Most Influencial Person---#3---Recovery. To read more about Kathy go to http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/most-influencial-person-3-recovery.html
This article is dedicated to her memory. The idea of doing a God Box is probably the best gift that Kathy ever gave me. It helped teach me the idea of surrender.


For an incest survivor, the idea of surrender is a difficult one to even think about, much less do. Surrender takes a lot of trust which incest survivors are usually short on. Surrender doesn't mean playing victim and doing nothing. It means doing whatever you can, in your power, to solve a problem and then surrendering or turning over the results to God. That is where the God Box comes in.


The process that I take in using my God Box is to do the necessary action to solve whatever my problem is, then write it down on a small piece of paper. Fold the paper and put it in my God Box. Say a prayer asking God to handle the results. Put the God Box away and forget about it until the next problem comes up. Then the process starts all over again. At the end of the year, you take out your God Box, open it and read all of the small pieces of paper that you put into it during the year. You will have forgotten some of the problems totally. Others you will remember, how once you got ego out of the way, the problems seem to just disappear. Others may still be something that is a problem. Put it back into the Box. Don't take it out of God's hands.


I haven't actually used my God Box in a long time. I surrender things a lot easier than I used to. Today I simply say a prayer and turn it over to God. The God Box was just a tool that I used to teach me to surrender and to trust God and myself.


My first year of using a God Box, I wasn't very good at surrender. I only put 4 things in it. The second year, I was a little better and had over 40 items in my God Box at the end of the year. The third year, I either did pretty good or had more problems or both. I had over 100 items that I released to God that year.


The God Box is a great tool for learning about surrender. It also taught me that I didn't have to carry everything on my shoulders. I am not in control of the world. I am not even in control of my little bit of the world. Guess what? The world didn't fall apart because I was able to surrender control. Control could be a whole other article. Not today.


Kathy, thanks for teaching me about surrendering and God Boxes.