A Sprinkle of Surrender

I have to be honest. Surrender is one of those words I used to completely misunderstand.

To me, surrender sounded like giving up. It sounded like weakness. It sounded like waving the white flag and saying, “Okay, fine. I lose.”

And who wants to do that?

Not me.

Especially because I am what you might call a recovering control freak. I say recovering because I am aware of it now, but let’s not pretend I have mastered this. Not even close.

Surrender is still hard for me. Just like boundaries are still hard for me. Just like patience is still hard for me. Apparently, all the things I need to talk about most are the things I am still working on myself.

But maybe that is the point.

I do not think surrender means giving up. I think surrender means finally releasing what was never yours to control in the first place.

That is a very different thing.

And it sounds good when you say it like that, right? It sounds peaceful. It sounds healthy. It sounds like something we should all be doing.

But living it? That is another story.

Because when you love someone, when you care deeply, when you are afraid of what might happen if you stop pushing, fixing, managing, reminding, arranging, or rescuing, surrender can feel almost impossible.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

If you have been following my story for a while, you know that my husband, Gary, passed away three and a half years ago from a terminal blood cancer. But during the six months between his diagnosis and his death, the cancer was not the hardest part of his journey. Or mine.

The hardest part was his struggle with mental illness.

Before the cancer diagnosis, I had already noticed that something was changing. Gary had worked with me in my insurance agency for twenty years. We were in it together. But little by little, he stopped being himself.

He was not fun anymore. He seemed down all the time. He had terrible anxiety. Some days he couldn’t make it to the office. Other days he would get there but couldn’t come inside. When he did come in, he would practically hide in a closet and sleep in a chair.

And I did what I always did.

I tried to fix it.

I made doctor’s appointments. I reminded him. I told him the night before. I told him the morning of. And then he wouldn’t get out of bed. So I would call the doctor’s office and apologize because either he had been a no show or I was canceling at the last minute.

Then I would reschedule and try again.

And again.

And again.

It was not just one doctor. There were many doctors because he also had physical health issues before the terminal cancer diagnosis. I was trying to get him to go to therapy. I was trying to get him out of bed. I was trying to get him to the office. I was trying to figure out what was wrong and what I could do to make it better.

I thought if I encouraged him enough, loved him enough, pushed him enough, maybe I could change the outcome.

But I couldn’t.

That is such a painful sentence to write.

I couldn’t.

At some point, I realized I could set things up, but I could not make him do anything. I could make the appointment, but I could not make him go. I could encourage him, but I could not make him accept help. I could love him, but I could not control his choices.

Eventually, my son Sam, who also struggles with mental illness, said to me, “Dad needs help. You have to call 911. We have to get him into a mental hospital.”

A few years earlier, we had been through a terrible situation with Sam where the police and emergency responders came and had to take him away against his will. It was one of the worst days of my life. But Sam also knew that getting help had helped him, and he wanted the same for his father.

Eventually, we had to do that with Gary too.

It was awful.

There is no way to make that story prettier than it was.

And as much as I wanted to fix everything, I had to face the truth. I could not control what Gary did. I could not control how he responded. I could not control whether he accepted help.

All I wanted was to make things better for him.

But wanting something badly enough does not mean we have control over it.

That is one of the hardest truths I have had to learn.

And I have had to learn it more than once.

My son Sam is now twenty-five, and because he struggles with mental illness too, I have had to face surrender with him in a different way.

When he was younger, I had more control. Or at least I thought I did. I could make him go to doctor’s appointments. I could make him go to therapy. I could stand there and watch him take his medication. I could remind him, push him, guide him, and try to influence how he showed up in the world.

But as he has gotten older, I cannot control those things anymore.

I can leave his medication out and hope he takes it. Some days I come home and it is gone. Other days I find the pills somewhere in a baggie because he meant to take them after eating and then forgot.

I have suggested reminders. I have suggested using tools. I have suggested all the things.

But I cannot make him do it.

I tried forcing therapy too. And eventually the therapist contacted me and basically said it was not working. He was showing up, but he had nothing to say. Or he was not being honest. And the truth was, it was not helping because I was forcing it.

Again, I was trying to control what I could not control.

And that is heartbreaking when you love someone.

It is really hard to learn the difference between supporting someone and controlling someone.

Because in our minds, especially when we are caregivers or helpers or mothers or partners, we tell ourselves we are just trying to help.

And we are.

But sometimes our helping becomes gripping.

Sometimes we hold on so tightly because we are terrified of what will happen if we loosen our grip.

But gripping is exhausting.

I cannot even tell you how many times I felt frustrated and resentful. I would think, “I did everything. I made the appointment. I figured out the medication. I rearranged my schedule. I handed it to you on a silver platter. All you had to do was show up.”

And when they didn’t, I was angry. Hurt. Resentful. Exhausted.

Because trying to control everything puts you on a hamster wheel.

You are making the appointments, canceling the appointments, rescheduling the appointments, worrying whether they are awake, worrying whether they will show up, worrying whether they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

And then, on top of all that, you still have your regular life.

No wonder caregivers are exhausted.

No wonder so many of us are running on fumes.

Because it is exhausting to care. But it is even more exhausting to believe you are responsible for things you were never actually able to control.

And that is where surrender comes in.

Surrender is not giving up.

It is not saying, “I don’t care anymore.”

It is not abandoning hope.

It is not becoming passive.

Surrender is loosening your grip.

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I love that visual because that is exactly what it feels like to me. That tight grip we walk around with. The constant bracing. The constant anticipating of the next problem, the next fire, the next crisis. The constant effort to control the outcome so nothing blows up in our faces.

Surrender is saying, “I will do what I can, but I will stop pretending I can control what I can’t.”

That applies to people. But it also applies to our goals, our timelines, and the way we think life is supposed to unfold.

For me, another big surrender lesson came through weight loss.

If you are new to me, one of my lifelong struggles has been my weight. After I turned fifty, I had this realization that something had to change. At that point, I was about one hundred pounds overweight, and I knew I needed to do something for my health.

In the past, every time I tried to lose weight, I attached a timeline to it.

I want to lose twenty pounds in three months.

I want to lose weight by my birthday.

I want to lose weight by summer.

I want to lose weight before the wedding, the party, the vacation, the whatever.

You know how this goes.

And then when I did not hit that deadline, I would beat myself up.

What is wrong with me?

Why can’t I do this?

I have no willpower.

My body does not lose weight fast enough.

And usually, I would give up.

But this time, something shifted.

I surrendered the timeline.

For the first time, I realized this was not a short term project. This was not about hitting some random date on the calendar. This was a lifelong relationship with my body, my health, and my choices.

What if I did not lose twenty pounds in three months?

What if I lost eight?

Was that failure?

No. That was eight pounds.

And if I stayed the same instead of gaining, that was still a win.

When I surrendered the timeline, the pressure eased. The urgency softened. I stopped forcing the outcome, and somehow that made consistency possible.

Now, I am sixty-two, almost sixty-three, and I am still on this journey. I have lost ninety pounds. I would still like to lose more. But if I had not surrendered the timeline, I honestly do not believe I would be where I am today.

Because every time I failed to meet one of my made-up deadlines, I probably would have quit.

Surrendering the deadline gave me room to keep going.

And that is the part I want you to hear.

Surrender does not mean you stop trying.

It means you stop strangling the process.

You stop demanding that everything happen exactly when and how you want it to happen.

You stop making peace dependent on a guaranteed outcome.

And believe me, I know how hard that is.

We try to control people because we want them to be okay.

We try to control timing because we want certainty.

We try to control outcomes because uncertainty feels scary.

We try to control life itself because reality does not always match what we had in mind.

But sometimes our suffering comes less from what is happening and more from our resistance to what is happening.

That does not mean what is happening is easy.

It does not mean it is fair.

It does not mean we like it.

It just means that fighting reality every single day does not make reality easier to live with.

So what does surrender look like in real life?

With people, it might mean being supportive without being controlling.

With your goals, it might mean showing up consistently without demanding instant results.

With uncertainty, it might mean moving forward without having all the guarantees.

With timing, it might mean trusting steady progress instead of forcing some imaginary deadline.

My word for 2026 is steady, and I think this is exactly why that word has been speaking to me.

Steady means I am not forcing everything.

I am not panicking.

I am not gripping so tightly.

I am still moving forward, but I am not trying to bully life into happening on my schedule.

Something about steady feels like surrender in motion.

And I love that.

So now I want to ask you what I have been asking myself.

What are you trying to control?

Is it actually yours to carry?

Are you supporting, or are you gripping?

What would loosening your grip look like?

And I know the first reaction might be, “I’m not trying to control anyone.”

I get it. Control does not sound like a flattering word. But I do not think most of us do it because we are terrible people. I think we do it because we care. Because we are scared. Because we want certainty. Because we want the people we love to be okay. Because we want life to feel a little less unpredictable.

That is human.

But this week, I want you to ask yourself one simple question.

What is one thing I am gripping too tightly right now?

And what would happen if I loosened my grip just a little?

Not all at once.

Not forever.

Just a little.

Some of the hardest peace I have ever found came when I finally accepted that I could not fix everything.

And that did not mean I stopped loving.

It meant I stopped carrying responsibility for things that were never mine to control in the first place.

Surrender is not letting go of love.

It is letting go of the illusion of control.

-Debbie Weiss