You know that thing where you say you're fine with however something turns out...
but you are most definitely not fine with however it turns out?
You're fine with approximately three outcomes, all of which you've already considered, and ideally everyone involved will select one of those.
Other than that?
Totally surrendered.
I laugh, but I know this one.
There are things I've “given to God” and then proceeded to check on approximately fourteen times.
Here You go, God. This one's Yours.
Also, just wondering what we're doing with it? Any updates? Should I send the email? I could send the email.
No?
Okay.
I'll check back tomorrow.
Apparently my version of surrender occasionally comes with project-management support.
And that's what makes letting go so difficult to talk about. It sounds beautiful in theory.
Release the outcome. Trust the process. Give it to God.
Okay.
But what do I actually do at 11:17 p.m. when my brain has produced six new scenarios and would very much like to discuss all of them?
What do I do when I'm waiting for an answer, somebody else gets to make the decision or the timeline changes? What happens when I've done what I can do and there is genuinely nothing left for me to manage?
That's where letting go becomes considerably less poetic.
Because sometimes letting go looks like... nothing.
You don't send another text or check again. You don't have the conversation in your head for the seventeenth time or rearrange the plan just so you can feel like you're doing something.
You let the thing remain unresolved.
Ugh.
For someone who likes movement, answers and a nice actionable next step, unresolved can feel almost unbearable.
At least when I'm doing something, I feel involved. Planning gives me something to work on. Research gives me information. Replaying the conversation makes me feel like I'm preparing. Checking gives me the illusion that perhaps something has changed in the last eleven minutes.
Stillness gives me...
stillness.
And sometimes that's exactly the part I don't want.
Because we've spent this whole month looking at the different ways we reach for control when something feels uncertain. We plan. We escape. We manage ourselves. We try to reduce the number of ways things can surprise or disappoint us.
Eventually, though, we hit something we cannot organize our way around.
There are outcomes we don't get to choose, people we don't get to manage, answers that don't come when we want them and timelines that completely ignore the one we had in mind.
At some point, continuing to grip doesn't make us more prepared.
It just makes us tired.
Not necessarily I have too much to do tired. It's a different kind of tired—the kind that comes from always having part of your brain on duty.
You're monitoring, anticipating, running scenarios and watching for changes. You're trying to stay one step ahead of whatever might happen next.
You can sit completely still and be exhausted from it.
That's what I mean by grip.
And eventually the grip itself becomes the painful thing.
But this is where I think we get nervous about letting go, because it can sound suspiciously like giving up.
And those are not the same thing.
I think the difference is that giving up is about abandoning something. Letting go doesn't necessarily abandon anything. You can still care deeply about the outcome and keep doing what is yours to do. You're just no longer trying to carry the parts that aren't yours.
And that's harder than it sounds.
Because sometimes there actually is more you could do.
You could follow up again, push harder, explain yourself one more time, spend another hour researching or keep tinkering with the plan.
The question isn't always whether there's another action available.
Sometimes it's whether another action is actually needed.
I've had to sit with that distinction.
Am I doing this because it will genuinely move something forward, or am I doing it because doing anything feels better than not knowing?
Because I can make anxiety look remarkably productive when given enough office supplies.
And this is where trust gets practical.
Trust isn't convincing yourself that everything will work out exactly the way you want. It isn't assuming nothing difficult will happen, and it certainly isn't pretending you don't care.
Trust is knowing you can stay grounded even when you don't know what happens next.
And that gets built in surprisingly ordinary moments.
You let the conversation breathe overnight instead of resolving it before bed. The plan changes and you adjust. Someone handles something differently than you would've, and you manage not to take it back. You pray about something and, for once, don't pick it back up five minutes later.
None of that is dramatic. But every time you do it, you're learning that you can tolerate not knowing yet. You can adapt. Somebody else can carry their part. Everything does not, in fact, need to be solved tonight.
Eventually, uncertainty stops feeling quite so much like an emergency.
I think that's part of what surrender actually looks like in faith too.
We sometimes talk about “giving it to God” as though there's one beautiful moment where we release the thing and never think about it again.
That has not been my experience.
Sometimes I give it to God and take it back before lunch.
Then I notice and give it back.
Not because I stopped caring about the outcome, but because caring about something and carrying all of it are two different things.
That's the distinction I keep coming back to.
I can care deeply about where something goes without making myself responsible for every step of getting it there. I can prepare without needing to predict exactly how it will turn out, and I can stop interpreting every unresolved thing as an invitation to intervene.
So if there's something you're gripping right now, you don't have to dramatically release your entire future tonight. Just notice the next time you feel the urge to check, fix or force an answer simply because waiting feels awful.
Then ask yourself one question:
Is there actually something for me to do here?
If there is, do it.
If there isn't...
That's the practice.
Let it sit. Let God be God.
And let yourself discover that you can still be okay while the answer is on its way.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Ep 61: Letting Go Without Losing Yourself in Control →