When I Chose to Surrender

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The day I separated from my husband. Although, if I'm honest, the separation started two years before I ever packed a bag.

Long before there was a rental car.

Long before there were boxes.

Long before there was a final conversation.

It started quietly - in the slow realization that something wasn't aligned. In the moments when I knew I needed to be truthful to myself. In the prayers I whispered asking God to fix what I didn't yet have the courage to confront.

By the time September 2025 came, the physical leaving was just the final step of a process my heart had already been walking through.

I packed everything I could into the Kia Soul rental I had. I packed clothes. Important papers. A few things that felt like pieces of a life I thought I would never leave.

And I packed my children.

That part still takes my breath away.

I closed the trunk, strapped them in, and drove away. I didn't look back. I couldn't.

I remember whispering through tears, "Lord, I don't know where I'm going...but I trust You."

For the first time in my life, I had to be honest with myself: I'm scared.

This wasn't the strong, composed version of me. This wasn't the woman who could handle everything and keep moving. This was a woman stripped of control. My physical strength meant nothing. The identity I had build around being "the strong one" suddenly felt heavy.

All my life, I maintained strength. I held my own - and sometimes - I held others. I handled things. I fixed things. I survived things.

Independent. Capable. Strong. Dependable.

That's who I was.

But sitting in that car with my babies in the back seat and uncertainty in front of me, I felt weak. Unsure. Exposed.

And strangely.... human.

For the first time, I wasn't trying to strategize my way through the pain. I wasn't trying to outwork it or out pray it with rehearsed words. I was broken open.

It was time to humble myself.

I cried real tears - not silent tears, not controlled tears - but the kind that come from a place you didn't know was still tender.

I told God, "You have to take over. I give you complete control."

And His Word echoed in my spirit:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)

I had quoted that scripture before.

But that day I lived it.

Surrender didn't feel like defeat. It felt like relief.

It was a strange kind of peace - like floating after fighting the current for too long. Like unclenching a fist, you didn't realize had been tight for years. Like finally putting down something you were never meant to carry alone.

There was grief. There was fear. There were questions I didn't have answers to.

But there was also clarity.

I was no longer fighting to control the outcome. I was choosing obedience over comfort.

That day looked like breaking. But it was actually alignment.

I didn't leave because I was weak. I left because I finally understood that surrender is not quitting - it is trusting.

And as I drove into the unknown with my children behind me and God before me, I realized something powerful:

I was not falling apart.

I was being led.

That was the day I stopped trying to be my own protector. That was the day I chose to surrender.

And that was the day God began rewriting my story.

Reflective Question:

What are you still trying to control that God may be asking you to place fully in His hands?