The Invitation of Interruption

The Invitation of Interruption

Understanding Divine Disruption

Personal reflections from a fellow traveler.  Not AA approved literature.  Shared in the spirit of Experience, Strength, and Hope.

My dreams, my hopes, my plans, my way.  Me.  Me.  Me.

Sound familiar?

“Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”  Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62

I’m guilty of this.  Not just once, but daily.  I struggle with the concept and practice of surrendering.  After all I’ve served, sacrificed, suffered, and survived.  Surely, I’ve earned some say in how the story should unfold.

And maybe that is precisely where the trouble begins.

Somewhere along the way, gratitude quietly becomes entitlement. Survival becomes self-reliance. Experience can convince me that I know what is best, and perseverance can harden into insistence. I stop asking God what He would have me do and begin asking Him to bless what I have already decided.

I call it planning. I call it wisdom. I call it responsibility. But sometimes, beneath all those respectable words, sits an old familiar desire: control.

Then comes the interruption.

The phone call I didn’t expect. The plan that falls apart. The relationship that changes. The door that closes. The prayer that seems unanswered. The timeline that stretches beyond my patience. Life moves in a direction I did not authorize, and suddenly I am confronted with an uncomfortable truth: perhaps surrender was never meant to occur only when God agreed with me.

Maybe the interruption is not the obstacle.

Could it be the invitation?

An invitation to loosen my grip. To release my demand that life unfold according to my design. To consider that what feels like disruption may actually be direction. That what I interpret as interference may be intervention. That God, in His mercy, may interrupt the story I am trying so desperately to write in order to lead me into one I could never have imagined for myself.

The challenge, then, is not simply learning to endure interruption.

It is learning to recognize the invitation hidden within it.

What interruption in my life might actually be an invitation to surrender?