WHAT SURRENDER LOOKS LIKE ON AN ORDINARY TUESDAY

"Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."

1 Peter 5:6

When most people hear the word surrender in a faith context, they picture a dramatic moment. A woman on her knees, tears streaming, finally releasing the thing she has been holding onto for years. A turning point. A before and after. A single, identifiable moment when everything changed and she walked away lighter than she had been in longer than she could remember.

And sometimes it does look like that. My own journey had a moment like that — the gentle, clear prompting of God saying Enough, and the obedience that followed. I have written about that moment before (read my first blog post if you are interested), and it was real and it was significant and it did change the trajectory of everything that came after it.

But what nobody talks about is what comes after that moment. The ordinary Tuesday, weeks or months or years later, when the grip starts to tighten again and she has to choose, for what feels like the hundredth time, to open her hands. The moment that does not feel dramatic or significant or worthy of a blog post, but that is, in many ways, the truer and more important practice.

That kind of surrender is what I want to talk about today.

WHAT I WAS REALLY SURRENDERING

If I strip away all of the wellness language and the protocol terminology and the health optimization framing and get to the honest center of what was actually happening during my years of health striving, what I find is this: I needed to be in control. That was the root of it. Underneath the elimination diets and the supplement protocols and the late night research sessions was a woman who genuinely believed that if she could just manage enough variables, she could force her body into the outcome she wanted.

That belief is exhausting to sustain. And it is, at its root, a form of not trusting God with the body He created.

Humble yourselves under God's mighty hand. Not the hand of the protocol. Not the hand of the practitioner or the nutritional therapist or the wellness influencer with the glowing skin. God’s hand. The one that formed you in your mother's womb and called what He made very good and has not once been surprised by anything your body has done, or not done, or will do.

Releasing control back to that hand was the work. And it did not happen all at once.

THE THICKEST LAYER

Within the larger surrender of control, there was one layer that was particularly thick and very stubborn, and if you have been following along here for any length of time you already know what it was.

The food fear.

Two and a half years of living inside a framework that had taught me, with the best of intentions, to be afraid of an ever-growing list of foods. Two and a half years of meals that had become negotiations, of eating that had become a source of ongoing low-grade anxiety rather than the nourishment and pleasure and gratitude it was always meant to be. Unlearning all of that was not a quick or comfortable process. It required me to question things I had accepted as fact, to release approaches I had trusted, and to sit with the uncertainty of not having a protocol to follow when my body sent a signal I didn't immediately understand.

And here is the real deal — I still find moments where I have to check myself. Now at 44, I am navigating mid-life hormonal changes, and the body image setbacks that come with them has brought its own challenges and its own particular version of the grip tightening when I least expect it.

Surrender is not a destination I arrived at and now permanently inhabit. It is a practice I return to, again and again, on days that do not feel particularly significant or spiritual or worthy of documentation. It is the work of ordinary Tuesdays.

REMEMBERING WHOSE I AM

So what does that practice actually look like, in the middle of an ordinary day when the second-guessing arrives or the body image thought tries to take up residence or the anxiety about a food choice begins to gather momentum?

It begins with a pause. And then a remembering.

Remembering whose I am. Remembering who created me — body and soul — in His image, fearfully and wonderfully made with intention and care and a purpose that extends far beyond how I look or how my digestion is functioning or whether I made the optimal food choice at lunch. Remembering that Jesus paid for this body with His own, and that the purchase was complete and the price was sufficient and the freedom it secured was not conditional on my performance.

"You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."

1 Corinthians 6:20

That verse lands differently when I hold it against the food fear and the body image struggles and the negative thoughts that arrive uninvited and try to make themselves at home in my mind. I was bought. My body belongs to God. And the voice that whispers “you are not healing fast enough”, “you are not doing it right” — that voice has no rightful claim over a body that was purchased at that price.

NAMING THE ENEMY

This is not a popular concept in the wellness space, and I think it is one of the most important things I can say in this post…

Not every negative thought about your body is simply yours.

The second-guessing of every food choice, the distorted perception in the mirror, the relentless inner voice that tells you that you are behind and broken and not trying hard enough and not healing the way you should be — not all of that originates with you. Maybe some of it does. But mostly, it has a different source entirely, one that the wellness space, with its focus on hormones and gut health and nervous system regulation, is not equipped to address.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full."

John 10:10

The enemy wants to steal her peace with your body. He wants to keep you distracted and anxious and disconnected from the wisdom God placed inside you, spinning in a cycle of self-doubt and health striving that keeps your eyes on yourself and off of Jesus, the one who holds you. And he is remarkably good at disguising his work as your very own thoughts, your fears, your inadequacy — because the most effective lies are the ones that sound like our own voice.

Part of the practice of surrender is learning to recognize his fingerprints on those thoughts. And then refusing, firmly and without extended negotiation, to agree with what he is saying — rebuking him in the name of Jesus Christ, reminding the enemy that he has no power over you.

THE DAILY PRACTICE

Surrender on an ordinary Tuesday looks like the practice of obedience to God. Not perfectly — I want to be very clear about that, because the pursuit of perfect surrender is just another form of striving and we have already established that striving is not what we are after here. But intentionally. With awareness and with the genuine desire to keep returning to His hand even when the grip tightens and the fear rises and the old patterns pull.

This is something I have been focusing on with particular intentionality over the last season of my own life, and what I have found is that the practice becomes more natural over time even if it never becomes effortless. The pause gets easier to locate in the middle of a hard moment. The remembering comes more quickly. The hands open a little more readily than they used to, not because I have mastered something but because I have practiced something, over and over, in the small and unglamorous moments that nobody sees.

Not perfectly. But intentionally. And in the wealth of God's grace — the grace that covers every moment of fumbling and forgetting and gripping again before I catch myself — that has always been enough.

THE FREEDOM THAT WAS ALREADY WON

I want to close with the truth that has changed everything for me.

The freedom you have been working toward and practicing toward and surrendering toward — it is not something you have to earn. It is not waiting on the other side of enough obedience or enough healing or enough letting go. It was not contingent on your performance then and it is not contingent on your performance now.

It was already won. On a cross, over two thousand years ago, by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — the one who bought your body with His own and declared the transaction complete and the debt paid and the chains broken.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Galatians 5:1

You are not fighting for freedom. You are learning to live in the freedom that is already yours — to walk in it, to breathe in it, to inhabit your body from within it rather than striving toward it from the outside. And surrender — the daily, imperfect, intentional practice of it on ordinary Tuesdays that feel nothing like turning points — is simply the practice of remembering that.

You are already free. Keep remembering. Keep practicing.

Heavenly Father,

I pray for the woman reading this today who needs to be reminded that you have already set her free — that the chains she finds herself in today, in the current state of her life, have already been broken. The enemy does not have power over her — oh, how he will try though. But let her also remember that because she is yours, the enemy never had power over her in the first place. So, please Lord, I ask you to protect her from the deception of the enemy, that his trickery would not have a stronghold on her. Release her, Jesus, and draw her close to you, in her surrender. Because we know that surrender is always sweetest when we lay it all down to you. Thank you for loving and caring so much for us, Lord. We love you.

I pray this all in the beautiful name of Jesus. Amen.

With grace and 🤍,

Brynn

A note before you go: I am a certified Health and Wellness Coach, not a licensed medical professional. Everything I share here reflects my personal experience and is offered for educational and informational purposes only — not as a substitute for professional medical, mental health, or dietary advice.

If you are navigating a serious or ongoing health concern, please continue working closely with your licensed healthcare providers. Never discontinue or modify prescribed treatments or medications without their guidance.

This blog exists to support women who feel overwhelmed in their bodies and their daily lives — whether that shows up as physical symptoms, emotional exhaustion, or simply a sense that something needs to shift. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.