There is something uniquely exhausting about trying to control the uncontrollable. And most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it until the valley strips it away.
We were never meant to hold it all together. But that doesn’t stop us from trying — with everything we have, for as long as we can.
Control is a funny thing. We spend so much energy gripping it — not realizing that what we’re holding so tightly was never really ours to begin with.
I held tightly one night as I listened to my husband make one of the hardest decisions of his life — surrendering control of his own body to a medical team, not knowing if he would survive it. He had no guarantees. No certainty. Just a decision to let go of something he was never able to hold in the first place.
In my heart, I was holding onto him with everything in me — and holding onto my Savior at the same time. He was surrendering — I was gripping.
His life. My father’s health. The outcomes I had been praying over and bargaining for. I held on to all of it so tightly, as if my grip was the thing keeping it together. As if control was ever really mine to have.
It wasn’t.
None of it was.
And that’s the thing about the illusion of control — it’s exhausting. It asks everything of you and gives you nothing in return. God never designed you to carry it. He never intended you to be the one holding it all together.
The valley has a way of stripping that illusion away. Not gently — but completely. And what’s left when you finally open your hands isn’t emptiness. It’s the terrifying, freeing, undeniable realization that He was holding it all along. A God who is sovereign over every outcome, compassionate in every moment, and faithful to every promise He has ever made.
You were never in control. But He always was. And there is no safer place to lay it all down than in the hands of a God who loves you completely, sees you fully, and has never once dropped what you’ve entrusted to Him.
Leave a Reply