Surrender by John Eldridge

I've nearly completed John Eldridge's book "Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers." In the chapter "Letting Go," I found this excerpt titled "Surrender" (pp. 192-193) to be excellent. He writes:

The time has come for us to quit playing chess with God over our
lives. We cannot win, but we can delaythe victory, dragging on the pain of
grasping and the poison of possessing. You see, there are two kinds of
losses in life. The first is shared by all mankind--the losses that come
to us. Call them what you will--accidents, fate, acts of God. The
point is that we have no control ove them. We do not determine when,
where, what, or even how. There is no predicting these losses, they happen
to us. We choose only how we respond. The second kid is known only
to the pilgrim. They are losses that we choose. A chosen loss is
different from repentance, when we give up something that was never ours to
have. With a chosen loss, we place on the altar something very dear to us,
something innocent, whose only danger is in its goodness, that we might come to
love it too much. It is the act of consecration, where little by little or
all at once, we give over our lives to the only One who can truly keep
them.

Spiritual surrender is not resignation. It is not choosing to care no
longer. Nor is it Eastern mysticism, an attempt to get beyond the
suffering of this life by going completely numb. As my dear friend Jan
describes, "It is surrender with desire." Desire is still present, felt,
welcomed even. But the will to secure is made subject to the divine will
in an act of abandoned trust. Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Frederick Buechner has suggested that we contrast him with a picture we have of Buddha, so that we might see the difference of true surrender.

"Buddha sits enthroned beheath the Bo-tree in the lotus position. His lips are faintly parted in the smile of one who has passed beyond every power in earth or heaven to touch him. 'He who loves fifty has fifty woes, he who loves ten has ten woes, he who loves none has no woes,' he said. His eyes are closed.

Christ, on the other hand, stands in the garden of Gethsemane, angular, beleaguered. His face is lost in the shadows so that you can't even see his lips, and before all the powers on earth or heaven he is powerless. 'This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,' he has said. (Now and Then)