This week I was forced into surrender.
A 3-year-old root canal turned ugly, the kind of infection you can’t see because it hides beneath a crown. Insurance has a waiting period preventing me from scheduling an extraction or treatment, and there was nothing I could do to touch the source directly, because it was underneath a perfectly sealed and intact crown. As much as I hate antibiotics, they were the only option to prevent the infection from spreading.
Honestly, I wanted another way. But there wasn’t one. And I had a choice — to keep spinning in frustration about what I couldn’t change, or to put my energy into what I could control.
What We Can Control
In health, the basics often get overlooked because they don’t sound glamorous. But they are so, so powerful.
- How we nourish our bodies. The foods we choose build our cells, regulate our hormones, and stabilize our energy.
- How we move. Gentle, intentional movement supports metabolism, muscle, mood, and longevity.
- How we respond to stress. Sleep, boundaries, breathing practices, prayer — these are levers we actually get to pull.
When we show up consistently in these areas, we create the strongest foundation possible for our health.
What We Can’t Control
As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, there will always be things outside our hands.
- Genetics.
- Past choices we can’t undo.
- Illness that comes suddenly.
- Insurance red tape (hello, waiting periods).
- Even the way our bodies respond to interventions and protocols.
These things can stir up fear, frustration, even guilt. But ruminating over them doesn’t improve the body. In fact, emotional stress only drains us further.
The Role of Surrender
So if we can’t stress, what do we actually do with uncertainty and doubt? All that’s left is surrender. It’s the same force that gets a woman through labor, that allows you to commit to another person in marriage, and to guide your children without controlling them. Surrender is the common thread that makes healthy risks possible, and it’s available to us in our health too.
Surrender is not the same as giving up. It’s not passive. It’s active trust.
Surrender says: I’ll do my part faithfully — nourish, move, rest, breathe — and then I’ll release the rest to God, to my body’s wisdom, to the natural process of healing.
It allows us to stay engaged without being crushed by the weight of controlling outcomes that were never ours to carry in the first place.
Practices of Surrender
Here are a few practical ways I’ve been leaning into surrender this week:
- Journaling or prayer: Naming the things I can’t control and consciously placing them in God’s hands.
- Gentle exercise: Instead of punishing workouts when I’m already stressed, I choose walks, stretches, or mobility.
- Reframing “failure” as feedback: If I don’t eat perfectly one day, I ask what I learned from it instead of spiraling into shame.
- Remembering truth: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Stillness is an act of trust.
Closing Thoughts
When you focus on stewardship and surrender the rest, you regain your peace and power. Your job is not to control every variable in your health. Your job is to steward what you can — your nutrition, your movement, your response to stress — and surrender the rest.
So let me ask: What’s one thing you can focus on this week? And what’s one thing you need to let go of?
