Finding Grace in Surrender When We Can’t Fight for Love
By: Crystal Jackson
Tags: Personal Growth, Love, Self, Relationships, Acceptance

Finding Grace in Surrender When We Can’t Fight for Love

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Conventional wisdom tells us that when we love someone, we should fight for them. Fighting for love is such a theme in romance that it seems counterintuitive to surrender to its end instead. But when we love someone, we have to accept their decisions — including the ones where they no longer choose to include us in their lives.

If life was actually a romcom, the end of the relationship wouldn’t be the end. We’d see the motivated partner continue to woo the other partner back — showing them with increasingly elaborate gestures just how much they care. In the end, the other party would be convinced. Cue fireworks. Cue the happily ever after of our deepest fantasies.

So, it can feel defeating when we come to the end and instead of fighting for love, we have little choice but to surrender to loss. It feels like rejection paired with failure served up with a side of impotence that we cannot have what we want.

I’ve been trying to find the grace in surrender. I have been spending time with the idea of acceptance. My wild heart wants to fight for love, but my mind — ever rational and reasoning — knows that love doesn’t mean forcing our own feelings and agenda on the object of our affection. Love is — or at least, should be — unconditional.

Love isn’t conditional on the relationship continuing — in fact, relationships have conditions all their own. It isn’t predicated on the people we love making the choices we prefer. Love doesn’t demand to be returned or attempt to manipulate anyone to fulfill our dreams at the expense of their own.

Love often gets cast in the role of fireworks and grand gestures, but often love is the quiet actions we don’t see and, even if we did, wouldn’t find noteworthy. In this case, love is the quiet acceptance of a decision that brings me pain. It is respecting — and yes, loving — enough to acknowledge that free will isn’t only meant to be honored when we’re the ones exercising it. Love, in this case, isn’t found in the act of persuasion but in the act of surrender.

Love doesn’t demand to be returned or attempt to manipulate anyone to fulfill our dreams at the expense of their own.

It may feel like inaction, but the reality is that it takes effort to love someone while accepting that they don’t want to partner us. It goes beyond romantic relationships. It’s accepting our children’s decisions to live their own lives and making peace with the ones we love choosing differently than we would. Surrender is not forcing our worldview on everyone around us and withholding our love until they fall in line.

There is grace in honoring other people’s choices. There is grace in surrendering to reality as it is, not as we hoped it would be. Of course, there is also heartache in it.

Love, in this case, isn’t found in the act of persuasion but in the act of surrender.

I have had many life challenges to overcome, but this one is unique. I’ve been told in one way or another my whole life that love is worth fighting for, but no one ever prepared me for the necessity of surrender when the love I feel and would like to give isn’t welcome. My heart is heavy, and my hands are full. Yet, I still have a hard time laying down the burden and walking away.

Fighting for what I want is instinctive, and yet I am challenged to accept, to surrender, and to let go instead — to feel love and yet carry it like a secret. I wait for the hope — and the love — to pass. I wait for time and distance to wear them down.

Because every experience of love has been stronger for me than the last, I’m hoping the next one will sweep in and eradicate the last of this one I can’t keep. I used to think my heart was limited and could only hold so much love. Now, I know that it is infinite, and I hold out hope that one day, I will be able to trust in a love worthy of that trust.

For now, I am left with a wild, war-crying heart ready to go into battle and a mind whispering urgently a need for peace and a laying down of arms. I let my wild heart grieve. There’s nothing else it can do. I listen to its arguments, its stubborn refusal to believe that the love I would offer could ever be undesired. I tell it soothing stories. I remind it of all it has yet survived — all it is capable of surviving still.

Finally, I remind my wild heart that would fight for love that sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to let go. It is the ultimate act of honoring another human — to see their need and their desires in the face of our own and to accept. Love doesn’t always look like giving from an overflowing heart. Sometimes, it looks like walking away with a heart full of love.