Submission

I hate the word submission. It bristles my spirit. I hate it because it has been weaponized toward women for so long, and because it was weaponized toward me. In some ways I think I chose this word in 2011 because I believed I was called, as a woman, to bow down and lose myself. Like Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, finally beaten down to the point where she is willing to put her hand under Petruccio’s foot in an act of a broken spirit, I felt that to say yes to faith and to a community of faith meant to utterly fade away. It took me years to undo this, and as my hatred of this word shows, I am still undoing it.

But when I’m not angry, when I am in a healed and peaceful state, I now think of submission as mutuality, and I think of it as color. I think of Palestinian mirrors and Turkish rugs. I think of texture, because I think of people bending to and weaving among each other, braiding themselves into patterns that can’t exist if one strand of thread continues forward in a straight line forever. If there is to be any beauty woven from different yarns, if a tile is to join a mosaic, there must be a loss of rigidity. The single must become part of a whole, and it must allow the whole to change it. It must submit to something larger, more grand, more bright. A blue thread alone is lovely, but a blue thread woven into an ornamental rug is exquisite. A white tile might shine, but when pieced together with emerald and maroon and tangerine it becomes art. At the end of the day, I don’t want to be a lone strand of yarn, trying to figure things out in the world. I want to bend to others. I want to be changed by others. I want my thread to be hidden away for a while while someone else shines, then to come out again at the right time, weaving into the rhythm of the design. 

The thing is, I am not good at being hidden. It is my goal – my favorite kind of people are the kind who are willing to be in the background. I think people who are truly loving, the kind who make you warm inside, are the kind of people who don’t mind being hidden. They know who they are and they know the color they bring to the table. They shine when it benefits the whole, and the whole are better for it. People who can submit, who can weave in and out of other people’s lives, are the best kind of people. I want to be like them, although I often wonder how to practically do so.

But even more than all of this, I wonder if this word is also about my, our, attitude toward life – if it is about acceptance. Acceptance of the life that’s put in front of you, for better or for worse, in suffering and in doubt. Part of submission is not just submitting to other people, or submitting to God, but in submitting to your own life; to your own circumstances. It is submitting to place. I have been driving the roads of Columbus this year, realizing that this is where I am landing. I am not moving to Lebanon. I am not learning Arabic (at least not yet). I am here, in this mundane, gray city that I always thought I’d somehow escape. But the calling stayed. And so here I am, driving these roads, beginning to fully drop down into this city, and not really knowing how. Submission, I think, is learning to drive the roads you are called to drive, and not to covet someone else’s. There is a strange joy in this kind of acceptance. It is the gentle joy of belonging, of knowing and being known. In the last year I have begun to memorize the parts of I-270 and I-70 and I-71 and 315 that I barely knew existed before. I am learning the weave of my city - and only staying can do that.

That’s the core, I think. Submitting means staying. Submitting means wrestling with the restlessness inside yourself and not allowing it to dictate your whole life. Submitting means commitment to a God, to a people, to a dream. I don’t know why I thought this calling, this life, would feel a little more adventurous. It is, of course – I know that what I want to do is big, and I know it will get bigger. But it is starting so small, and with a reality that is smacking me wide awake. And I suppose that’s the biggest thing: submission is saying yes to reality. It’s about looking the truth in the eyes and saying, “this is what’s real, and I can’t run from that anymore.” Heartbreak is real. Poverty is real. God is real. Hope is real. I am looking into the eyes of my life this lent, and I am saying yes to what is real. I am submitting, again, to what is in front of me. And in this, there is beauty – there is vibrancy.