When You Can’t Take It Anymore

“I can’t take it anymore!  God, please take this!”

These were the words I silently prayed a few months ago as I stood at the kitchen sink while chaos was unfolding around me, which was part of a series of interrelated and increasingly difficult circumstances that I had encountered over the past several years.

However, my prayer was not a plea for God to remove or resolve the situation. Though I had prayed such in the past, pleading for God to do something, to change things, to make everything okay. 

And there were times without a doubt when God had intervened. But things were far from okay, and things were far too complicated now for a quick resolution.

So, my silent prayer that day at the kitchen sink wasn’t a request for God to take the situation away. Rather, it was a request for God to take control of it. 

I was taking the situation to God rather than asking God to take the situation from me.

It was a surrender – a surrender of my will to God’s will.

And I’ve learned that surrender isn’t a one-time thing. It’s not a one and done. Surrendering to God is a daily act – sometimes it’s even hour by hour, minute by minute. 

And when you’re in the middle of that hard place – that day after day, year after year, or perhaps even lifetime of struggle and pain – surrender meets you there.

Recently I was looking through some old photos on my phone when I stumbled across a few photos of some page excerpts from a book I had read several years ago – a book called Freefall to Fly by Rebekah Lyons. When I saw the date that the photos were taken, I knew exactly the hardships my family had experienced at that time. 

I began to read through the page excerpts in the photos, and as I did, I knew what those words must have meant to me back then. And I acknowledged to myself, as hard as those experiences were, I had no idea then how much harder things would get and how the words on these pages would be even more meaningful to me now.

Here’s a little of what the book has to say about surrender:

“Surrender changes everything. But we can’t choose surrender. It chooses us. It finds us and meets us in our pain. When we are at our lowest point. Our weariness. Our longing. It enters in when we have run out of our own strength.”

Did you catch that? Surrender chooses us.

And don’t miss the last part. Surrender enters in when we have run out of our own strength.

The book passage goes on to say:

“So we cry out, and we ask for rescue. Because somewhere deep down we know we are missing it. Our own attempts have failed us. The life we have orchestrated falls flat and leaves us lying in a corner, huddled in despair in those dark hours of the early morning.

Then we see it. The crack of the sunrise. Just a glow on the horizon. Pink and orange starting to rise and create a hue that colors the sky. It’s God whispering: I am here. I am true. I am strength …”

God. Is. Strength.

When we can’t take it anymore, that’s our cue that we’re trying to bear the weight in our own strength – the weight becomes too much to bear because we were never meant to carry it ourselves. That’s where the beauty of surrender comes in, because only when we stop relying on our own strength are we able to fully rely on God’s strength.

And God’s strength never runs out.

So, when life isn’t what you’d hoped for. When there’s a twist at every turn. When you ask God for answers that don’t come and change that doesn’t happen. When you’re doing all you can just to make it through each day. When the load keeps getting heavier. When your strength is almost gone and you’re not sure you can go on. When you can’t take it anymore …

Take it all to God.

Allow surrender to choose you.

For when we find ourselves in a place where we can’t do it on our own, a place where God is our only hope, that’s exactly where we need to be. 

And when we follow surrender’s lead, we just may find ourselves moving to a whole new rhythm of life.

That day at the kitchen sink a few months ago – that moment of surrender – well, it turned into a song later that day. As I leaned into the release that surrender had to offer, my thoughts formed into metered words that became lyrics to the soundtrack of my emotions.

It wasn’t the first time, nor the last (for more on that, see Post Note below). And though each song is different, the experience is always the same – surrender allows me to exhale. To exhale and breathe again.

As I relinquish control, I breathe in a little deeper and exhale littler slower. And the beat of my heart slows to the new rhythm, until I find myself in a place of rest.

And though it will look differently for you than me, surrender offers the same for us all – surrender is where striving ends and rest begins. 

Real rest. Rest for our souls. In the rhythm of God’s grace.

---

Post Note:
Songwriting is a new process for me. It’s not something I had ever considered or desired to do before last year, when it just sort of happened one day – though many moments of surrender and other events along the way led to that point (a story for another day). I’ve now written several songs, a few of which I’ve shared with family and friends when I’ve felt impressed to do so, but mostly it has become a new and unexpected creative outlet for me – a way that God has used my deepest pain to bring out something from within me that I never knew I was capable of … but that’s also a story for another day.