Higher Power Confusion
When I first started my journey with Overeaters Anonymous, I kept hearing about “surrendering to God’s will.” Trust it, don’t fight it, lean into it. It sounded beautiful… but honestly? I was confused.
What exactly was I supposed to trust? I didn’t know God’s plan for me — so how the heck was I supposed to follow it? Was my dream to move to Europe part of God’s plan? Was me choosing not to have kids God’s will? What if God’s plan was completely different from what I wanted? Did that mean I had to suffer through life, constantly at odds with my own dreams?
I wanted answers.
I needed a way to figure out if what I was doing was actually “God’s will” — or just me stumbling around on my own.
Everyone I knew seemed to have their own way of making peace with this concept, and I really wanted to figure it out for myself.
I needed a nice and elegant philosophical theory that made sense in my brain and my heart.
After eight months of thinking (and overthinking, let’s be real), a random, painful conversation at work ended up giving me the clarity I’d been searching for.
No Experience is Wasted
It started with a simple piece of advice from a career coach at work:
“Before you apply for a job, reach out to the hiring manager. Set up a quick call, show you’re interested, ask a few smart questions.”
So I did exactly that.
I emailed the hiring manager, set up a call, prepared my questions, and logged in with a big smile.
Within the first minute, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. The hiring manager was cold, clipped, and condescending — like she wanted to prove I was stupid.
After just five minutes, the call ended, and I spent the next fifteen minutes crying in the bathroom.
I’m not used to people being openly rude to me, so I allowed myself to cry, and I thought that was the end of the whole story.
The next morning, while sitting in my daily meditation, the whole thing came flooding back.
“Was it God’s will that she was bitchy to me?”
“Was it God’s will that I even reached out to her in the first place? I thought it was my idea…”
“If everything is God’s will… then where am I in all this?”
I sat with these questions, confused and frustrated, when suddenly a thought floated into my mind:
It’s like a dance…
What Does That Even Mean?
Let me explain.
In dance, there are two equal partners. Both of them are making moves. Both are reacting to each other.
They can work together… or not — depending on how the partnership is going.
Imagine this:
Partner A makes a move — Partner B responds.
Then Partner A responds to Partner B’s response.
They’re feeding off of each other, move after move, moment after moment.
Neither partner can control the other. They’re equals in this dance.
Now imagine this:
I am Partner A.
Life (or God, or the Universe — whatever you want to call it) is Partner B.
We both make moves.
We both respond.
And neither of us controls the other.
I make a move — like setting up a call with a hiring manager.
Life makes a move — the hiring manager turns out to be cold and condescending.
I don’t control Life’s moves. I can only control my response.
I can get angry, tell all my friends how unfair it is — or I can let it go, learn the lesson, and move on.
Whatever I choose, Life will eventually make another move.
And then it’s my turn again.
That’s how we dance together.
Why I Love This Metaphor So Much
1. It shows me where my free will actually lives.
I have 50% of the partnership. I have my own moves to make.
Life can’t force me to do anything (and trust me, I have plenty of years of experience doing absolutely nothing. That was still my move.)
2. It reminds me I have no control over Life’s moves.
I used to picture God as a moody old man in the sky, throwing good or bad events at me depending on whether He liked me that day.
That terrified me.
But if I think of Life’s events as neutral — not punishment or reward, just events — it all feels lighter.
If I get hit by a car, is it because God was angry with me?
Or is it because a factory worker forgot to tighten a bolt and it eventually failed?
No emotional baggage. No cosmic judgment.
Just Life making a move.
3. It makes surrender make sense.
Surrender isn’t about giving up.
It’s about giving up the hope that reality could be any different.
The car already hit me.
The meeting already went badly.
Wishing it didn’t happen doesn’t change it.
Surrender is accepting the move Life made — and choosing my next move wisely.
4. It helps me have a better relationship with Life.
I can fight Life, curse it, cry over it, wish it were different.
But Life will keep dancing the way Life dances.
Maybe, instead of using all my energy to fight, I could use it to move with Life.
To trust the rhythm.
To get a little lighter on my feet.
Not for Life’s sake — for mine.
When I think about the Serenity Prayer, it makes perfect sense now:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (Life’s moves),
Courage to change the things I can (my moves),
And the wisdom to know the difference.
And That’s The Dance
Life makes a move, I make a move.
I can waste my energy wishing things were different, or I can stay in the rhythm — learning, growing, responding the best I can.
It’s not about being perfect. It’s about staying in the dance — and not burning all my energy fighting Life, when I could be moving with it.
And honestly?
That feels a lot like surrender to me.