Surrender

By: Ana Maria T.

Date: March 16, 2026

It is a word that I used to hate but one that the Lord has been slowly introducing and opening me up to. I thought I knew what surrender meant. Maybe that is why I hated reading or hearing about it. It seemed repetitive and cliché to me. Especially all things regarding vocation and life. "Just let it go” is what I often thought and believed whenever surrender came up.

But is surrender more than that? Could it mean something more than simply “letting go?"

Like many of you, I have a deep desire for marriage and family life. I desire to be married, to love and serve God in and through a husband. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), I have not yet found the one the Lord has for me. And time and time again this longing and desire has brought me over to “surrender.”

I used to think of surrender as the act of completely letting go of my desires and vocation. “Putting it in God’s hands and walking away.” Thankfully, God is showing me that this is not the case. The Lord has been showing me a completely new and different aspect of surrender that I had never really considered before. (***cough, cough, maybe that is why surrender felt so repeated and cliché).

I am discovering that the Lord is not asking me to not sit with my desires and vocation. Nor is He asking me to simply “let my vocation go.” I’ve tried that. No, He delights and desires that I share with Him often and repeatedly. I don’t think He wants to hear only once how much I desire to love Him through the vocation of marriage. Nor how much I desire to love and share Him with someone else. No, I believe that He delights in these moments of intimacy and would be greatly saddened if I were to stop and “simply let it go.”

However, I am also realizing that there are things beneath my very immediate and felt desire for marriage that He does want me let go of.

Things like woundedness.

And vice.

And sin.

He wants me to let go.

To surrender and “simply let go."

To dig deep and examine what else is (or could be) underneath my very felt and good desire for marriage.

Could there be a wound that is giving fruit to a vice and sin that has blended so well that I don’t even recognize it as such?

Could there be a pattern of false thoughts, beliefs or emotions about myself, others or God that I have come to believe as true?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

To all of the above.

God works in mysterious and wondrous ways. He is bringing so much freedom and healing through a very simple yet persistent invitation “to surrender.”I thought this invitation was only about my vocation. But I am realizing that it is not. Yes, it is about trusting in His plans and providence in my life. But it is also about healing and letting go of what needs to go.

I wonder what an invitation to surrender could mean for you?