It’s late. You’re tired. There is absolutely someone you could ask to help with the thing you’re doing.
And yet...
there you are.
Doing it yourself.
Again.
Because by the time you explain what needs to be done, you could probably just do it.
Right?
And what if they don’t do it the way you would?
What if you have to go back and fix it anyway?
Honestly, doing it yourself really might be faster.
Tonight.
But when “I’ll just do it” becomes the answer every time, eventually you look around and realize you’re doing... pretty much everything.
Raising my hand here too.
I’ve spent a lot of my life being the person who can figure things out.
If something needs to happen, I’ll make it happen.
If there’s a problem, give me a minute.
If I need help?
Well.
Let’s not get carried away.
For a long time, I genuinely thought this was one of my greatest strengths.
And some of it is.
Being capable is a strength.
Being resourceful is a strength.
Taking responsibility for what belongs to you is a strength.
But somewhere along the way, I started confusing I can handle this with I should handle all of this myself.
Those are not the same thing.
I could ask for help, but doing it myself felt easier.
I could delegate something, but then I’d have to trust someone else with the outcome.
I could let my kids figure something out, but watching them do it differently—or slower—than I would took a level of self-control I apparently did not always possess.
So I’d step in.
Fix it.
Take over.
Handle it.
And every time I did, I reinforced the same story:
See? It’s easier when I do it myself.
Except eventually, “easier” got really heavy.
Because when you’re the person who always handles everything, people start believing you’ve got it.
Why wouldn’t they?
You keep telling them you do.
And then there’s this strange moment where you can start feeling frustrated that nobody is helping with a load you’ve spent years proving you don’t need help carrying.
That one is uncomfortable.
I had to recognize my part in it.
Not because nobody else ever should have stepped up.
Not because every overloaded woman created her own overwhelm.
Life is much more complicated than that.
But in my own life, there were absolutely places where my tight grip contributed to the very exhaustion I was frustrated by.
And underneath that grip was more than efficiency.
There was trust.
Or maybe the lack of it.
Could I trust someone else to do the thing without controlling how they did it?
Could I let my kids make dinner without hovering over the stove?
Could I hand someone a project and resist checking it three different times?
Could I ask for help without turning needing help into some kind of referendum on how capable I was?
Turns out, those were much harder questions than Can I do it myself?
Of course I could.
That was never really the issue.
The harder thing was letting go of my need to be the person every outcome ran through.
And I didn’t change that with one dramatic decision.
It happened in really ordinary moments.
Letting someone else handle something and leaving it handled.
Watching my kids do something differently than I would and keeping my mouth shut.
Okay, mostly keeping my mouth shut.
Asking for help before I was already overwhelmed.
Delegating something and resisting the urge to swoop back in the second it got uncomfortable.
Tiny releases.
But each one showed me something.
Letting go didn’t automatically make everything fall apart.
Sometimes people surprised me.
Sometimes they learned.
Sometimes I learned.
Sometimes the result wasn’t exactly how I would have done it, and the world continued spinning anyway.
Imagine that.
And I started realizing control has a cost beyond my own exhaustion.
If everything has to run through me, I become the bottleneck.
Other people don’t get the space to figure things out because I’m already there figuring it out for them.
My kids don’t build confidence by watching me do everything correctly.
People around me can’t take ownership of something I refuse to put down.
That changed the way I thought about letting go.
It wasn’t about becoming less responsible.
It was about becoming more honest about what responsibility actually required from me.
For me, faith belongs here too.
Stewardship isn’t the same as control.
I can show up faithfully for what God has entrusted to me without believing I’m responsible for controlling every outcome that comes from it.
That sounds obvious when I write it.
Living it?
Different story.
Because open hands require trust.
And sometimes the thing I’m gripping isn’t even the task itself.
It’s the certainty I think controlling the task gives me.
Maybe you know that feeling too.
Maybe your version is the house, the kids, work, the family calendar, a project, planning every detail of a trip or being the person everyone calls when something goes sideways.
You may genuinely be very good at carrying it.
That doesn’t automatically mean you need to keep carrying all of it.
So maybe the next time “I’ve got it” flies out of your mouth before you’ve even considered another option, notice it.
Do you actually need to be the one who handles this?
Or is handing it over uncomfortable because someone else might do it differently?
You don’t have to release everything.
Maybe just loosen your grip on one thing long enough to find out what happens when you’re not the only person holding it.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 18: What Happens When You Finally Stop Holding Everything So Tightly →