THE MAIN THING is never to get discouraged at the slowness of people or results. People may not be articulate or active, but even so, we do not ever know the results, or the effect on souls. That is not for us to know. We can only go ahead and work with happiness at what God sends us to do.
~Dorothy Day, The Reckless Way of Love
The words of Dorothy Day hit like a gut punch—sharp, sudden, and leaving us breathless, not because they are complicated or ornate, but because they strip away our illusions with brutal clarity. Her wisdom lands squarely in that tender, uncomfortable place where our self-assured plans collide with the humbling reality of what it means to truly surrender to God. It’s the kind of truth that doesn’t coddle or console but challenges, disrupts, and lingers, daring you to sit with it long after the sting has faded.
Let’s face it, we are hooked on immediacy like it’s a drug. We crave answers now, results yesterday, and a refund on unmet expectations by lunchtime. It’s no great mystery why; we’ve been conditioned to think this way. The apps we swipe, the systems we pledge allegiance to, the algorithms that map our every desire—all of it trains us to believe that waiting is a defect and slow progress is a kind of moral failure. The world hands us tracking numbers for Amazon packages but no roadmap for the condition of our souls, and so we panic, expecting God to operate with the precision and speed of Uber Eats: fast, efficient, entirely at our command.
But then there’s Dorothy Day, smiling serenely as she dismantles our delusions with her quiet defiance: work with happiness at what God sends us to do. Not what we’d prefer to do. Not what matches our curated aesthetic of faith or fits into a perfectly planned trajectory of personal growth. No, what God sends. And if you’ve been paying attention, what He sends is almost never convenient, polished, or instantly satisfying. It’s messy, uncomfortable, and full of detours—exactly the sort of thing our culture has taught us to avoid at all costs.
This is where surrender comes in—the kind of surrender that feels almost offensive to our sensibilities, steeped as they are in the myth of control. Surrendering to what God sends us means letting go of our demand for instant clarity, tidy resolutions, and the kind of measurable wins we can post on Instagram Reels or showcase in our Facebook feeds for likes and validation. It’s admitting that faith isn’t about quick turnarounds, perfectly curated outcomes, or applause-worthy moments; it’s about presence, patience, and trusting in a plan that unfolds on a timeline far beyond our own understanding—or control. And when God does show up—when we finally see glimpses of the results we’ve longed for—it’s often best to sit quietly in gratitude, keeping the moment sacred rather than turning it into another performance for the crowd.
And maybe that’s the secret hidden in Dorothy’s words: to surrender is to sit with the wounded and Sacred Heart of Jesus. To enter into His sorrow, His patience, His enduring love, and to know that He, too, understands the pain of waiting, the ache of surrendering control. It’s an invitation to step into His heart, broken yet full of mercy, and rest there—not in resignation, but in quiet trust.
Perhaps this is the same surrender that sustained the Blessed Virgin Mary. She didn’t demand clarity or results as she stood at the foot of the Cross, her heart pierced alongside her Son’s. She simply trusted. Her surrender was not passive—it was active, agonizing, and utterly rooted in love. To surrender as she did is to acknowledge that what God sends, no matter how incomprehensible or slow it feels, is not just enough—it’s everything.
This is the rebellion Dorothy calls us into: to abandon the world’s addiction to immediacy and instead embrace the sacred, agonizing, and transformative beauty of surrender. It is not easy. It is not glamorous. But it is holy. And in that holy surrender, we find not just faith but freedom, as we rest, finally, in the wounded heart of Jesus, where every frustration, every impatience, every unmet expectation is held and made whole.