“I used to think the opposite of control is chaos. But it’s not. The opposite of control is surrender. ”
I have always been a helper, fixer, do-er at heart since I could remember, and a lot of it, I would like to blame mostly being the first-born. If a person needs advice, help with something they are dealing with, financial support, a couch to sleep on, an extra home-cooked meal, groceries to get them through the week, it has been harder to not help than to help.
I didn’t realize that a lot of my energy and resources that I deemed faith was actually me operating as the savior and answer which is not the the role God has called us to operate in.
A few Thursdays ago, my day began around 6 am and ended around 7:15 pm, and I could have stayed home and missed out on the community group that I attend every Thursday, but something in my soul yearned for community, a fresh breath of air that I knew I couldn’t conjure up by myself. I decided to hop in my car and drive down arriving with my group just starting.
Being a helper, fixer, and savior to those that are in need may seem noble, but not when it comes from a place of enablement, and this is where I felt the line in the sand needing to be drawn.
I would notice myself embodying people’s dry and trying seasons as if they were my own, losing sleep, worrying, and trying to troubleshoot every possible solution to help friends and family that were in need.
The more I pushed to fix, the more God was asking me to operate in real faith which wasn’t me doing the fixing or troubleshooting. It was God asking me to let go and let Him be God in the lives of people that I love so dearly.
I get to my community group with this paradoxical issue: enabling and helping.
I was able to share with the group the weight I was carrying, and there was a young woman named Shakara, who shared a similar situation she went through with her mom.
She said God told her this: “You can never love her as much as I do”.
This simple saying seemed to disintegrate the weights that I have been carrying since I was born. Being born first came with the price to lead well and to support and fix, to be a role model leader.
After that Thursday, I chose to let go, to pause on fixing, to surrender the charade of perfectionism, and receive and truly be present in my season.
There is a balance that we need to find in this world since we all are in the words of Henri Nouwen “wounded healers”.
We all carry hurt, and in that, we do need each other because we all go through tough seasons, but there is a point when God calls us to a different kind of surrender, letting go and letting God be God in that person’s season. This was my true surrender.
God wasn’t calling me to surrender my finances, time, or resources this time; it was surrendering my resilience, my ability to want to be everything for everyone. Only God can be and do that.
This was so hard, but choosing to surrender this worked. It was so crazy how much fell into place after I truly surrendered that Thursday. Don’t get me wrong; there were moments that I felt that people in their seasons were going to hit rock bottom if I didn’t intervene, but what ringed and resonated so deeply in my soul was God saying “I love them more than you ever can”.
Every moment that I felt a loved one inched closer and deeper to hopelessness, I chose to surrender in prayer instead of conjuring plans.
I chose to surrender in speaking healing instead of focusing on the hectic.
I chose to surrender in praise to God instead of providing the provision.
God met me there; He met them there. Everything worked out for the good.
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”