I won't miss what God asks me to hand over

I was aware at the time that this tree was being taken down in my yard that there was a message in it for me , but at the time I really didn't understand what it was. Here it is a year and a half later and I came across this excerpt form C.S. Lewis.  I knew immediately that that was the signifiicance of the tree coming down and the anguish we all felt over it.   My son Nicholas spray painted the tree in protest.  (the village took it down)..............He had so many memories associated with the tree.  It was like they were removing a part of him.   Ah but God.....  He wants to  remake who we are. He might begin at first by lopping off a few branches, but in the end the whole tree must come down.  In order for us to have complete victory over our past and the stronghold that memories have over us, He will settle for nothing less than the whole tree down .

C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. … Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’

I won't miss what God asks me to hand over.  His plans for me are always for good and not for evil to give me a fututre and a hope.  There are things I have wrestled with God for years over and when I finally got so sick of ME I handed them over to Him and freedom was the result.  Joy unspeakable and full of glory is waiting on the other side of each surrender. 

I found this picture of my boys sitting on the trunk of the tree after they cut it down and it spoke to me of the light-hearted joy that results from giving things over to God. I have NEVER ONCE missed the thing that I have surrendered to Him.
What he has for me instead is ALWAYS so much better 
than the thing I laid down.