Take Heart

The Unexpected Blessings of Surrender

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 2 • Episode 74

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Sometimes we equate surrender with quitting or giving up, yet we forget that surrender means wrestling, trusting, and asking questions. It means letting go of our need to know the future in God’s capable hands. This week’s podcast dives into what surrender looks like, its cost, and unexpected gifts.

 February 22, 2022; Ep. 74

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:00-    Intro
  • 1:15-    Times Of Surrender
  • 8:19-    A Fine Line
  • 11:49-  What Surrender Looks Like
  • 18:31-  Waiting On God
  • 22:59-  Seen & Loved By God
  • 24:01-  Cost Of Not Surrendering
  • 30:00-  Surrender’s Blessings
  • 36:28-  Closing Prayer
  • 37:58-  Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

  • Scripture mentioned: Philippians 4:6-7

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Sara Clime  0:00  
Welcome to Take Heart. We're so glad you're here. If something we've said in the podcast has spoken to you, can you do us a favor and leave us a review. You can find all of our resources, information on our newsletter, and transcripts on our website at takeheartspecialmoms.com.

Sara Clime  0:34  
Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to offer encouragement, give hope and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. As we explore monthly themes, share inspiring stories and practical tips, our desire is to continue to serve you and new listeners, Carrie Amy, and I want to thank you for joining us today.

Sara Clime  1:15  
So this week, the three of us are together, we are going to wrap up this month on surrender. So we have a few questions that we're going to discuss, and I think we would just really encourage you to think about these questions and just ask them to yourself as well. So you know what? Amy, let me start with you. We're just going to jump right in, and we're going to be talking about surrendering to God's plan for our life. I think that that just can be so difficult. Do you remember an exact instance or a time or a situation where you surrendered to God's plan for your life?

Amy J. Brown  1:54  
Well, do I remember a time that I did it gracefully? No. But yes.

Sara Clime  2:01  
I didn't say gracefully, I just said surrender.

Amy J. Brown  2:02  
Yes, there are many. It's a daily surrender for me. But when I thought about this question, I thought about a couple of instances that were extremely difficult. The one that came to mind initially was when we sent our daughter to residential treatment. That was a very hard decision for us, and I've talked about it before on the podcast. But I didn't want that to be the case. I didn't want the behavior, the calls from school, and all the other things that we were dealing with to be our life. The thing is, I couldn't change them as much as I tried. As much as I tried to get resources, I couldn't change them. So for us to make that decision was very hard. I remember we went in to see another psychiatrist, and we just kind of got shut down. She didn't really listen. I know for moms that have kids with mental health issues; mental health is hard. It's hard to find a good psychiatrist. It's hard to get help. It's hard to get a diagnosis. I remember going to that meeting and just being dismissed by this doctor and knowing that nobody was going to help us. So we came home, and I don't think I talked for 12 hours. I think I went to my bed. Sounds kind of like a dramatic Victorian woman. I think I just was so overcome with the heaviness of what was happening. The next morning, I got up, I remember this, David and I were sitting in the back of our house on our porch and I just said, I think she needs to go to residential. It was such a fight to get to that decision, but once I made it, not that it wasn't hard still, but I immediately felt peace. I think my surrender was obviously to God and what was best for our child. The hard part I was having to surrender is my own ability not to be able to handle what was happening. So to be able to say I just can't do this was a very hard sentence to say out loud. In hindsight that was the best decision, we could have made, not without its hardships. I just remember trying everything around that decision to make something work that was not going to work. We just couldn't give her what she needed in our house. So yeah, that's it. It was not peaceful initially or graceful. I fought it tooth and nail. I couldn't fight it anymore.

Sara Clime  4:12  
I think surrendering, typically is. I mean, it's just not something that's innate with us, surrendering. We just think of powering through. We need to be able to handle it all. I think surrendering sometimes, and I talked about this in my individual podcast last week was I had to give up the idea that surrendering with quitting, and they're two separate things. Carrie, what about you?

Carrie M Holt  5:20  
Well, it's funny that you say that because the story that immediately popped into my mind was when we finally made the decision to stop all types of physical therapy for our son that related to him walking. From the time he was little, the hole that was in his spine was in the lumbar region, L3-L5. That's very common lingo around Spina Bifida. Where was your child's lesion? Where was the hole in their back when they were born?  I can remember working so hard. He had these clunky metal and plastic braces that went from his feet all the way up to his waist, and they surrounded his stomach. I even look back at photos now and think about all the hard work that he put into trying to walk and essentially, he has no feeling from the waist down. Any type of movement that he was doing, was with a walker, it was having to come from the nerves firing at his hips and his waist. It was a lot of work. Finally, his scoliosis progressed to the point where he was going to need rods called VEPTR, and they would extend from rib to rib and rib to pelvis. Basically, the orthopedic surgeon said, "He's not going to be able to continue to do braces and walking." I can remember walking out of that appointment that day, just devastated and crushed, because I did feel like we were giving in to the disease. We were giving in to the process. There's so much quality of life value, I think sometimes around a person walking. I had to give up that mentality that he wasn't less of a person because he wasn't walking, and he would use a wheelchair for all of his mobility. I think what it was is, it was also me having the. I'm kind of stumbling over my words because I'm a little bit emotional about this, but it was also me looking at my child as not a project to be fixed anymore and again, accepting and understanding and changing the mindset of I can't fix this, I can't control it. I'm not giving up, we're just taking a different path. This path is just as good as the path of physical therapy and walking, and all of that.

Sara Clime  8:20  
Again, I think it's just such a fine line in our heads and our hearts between quitting and surrendering. The act of surrendering to God is so vastly different than quitting any of the earthly turmoils that we've or maybe some that we just even heap on ourselves. For me, I remember a specific instance, I was in a grocery store parking lot. I was calling and getting the runaround about some respiratory treatments. Because for my son, for the longest time, he wasn't "disabled enough" to qualify for a lot, and that was frustrating, because I was like, I beg to differ. When we were on the phone, I just remember it was about an inhaler. It was a simple inhaler. It wasn't even anything life-giving for him. He has asthma, which is kind of unrelated. I remember I was on the phone with this lady, and I just started crying. I said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just want a prescription." All the specialists, all the doctors say he needs this, but you say he doesn't. I want to know what gives you and then I was apologetic and I'm like I'm so sorry. I know it's not your fault. I was a hot mess in this grocery store parking lot. I absolutely broke down. Then, unfortunately, the lady on the phone broke down with me. By the end of our crying jag together, she was like, I'm gonna get you this inhaler. I'm pretty sure she would have walked to the pharmacy herself and just personally mailed it to me. I remember sitting there, and I'm thinking. I don't know if it was just that I was at the end of my rope. Amy, you had said, you finally had to say, and I won't put words in your mouth, but you said something like I finally had to say that I just can't do this. I think surrendering to God in general, typically is what prompts most people to surrender. Very seldom have I heard somebody say, my life was going great. I was the captain of this team, and then I got a full-ride scholarship to an Ivy League and all of this other stuff. It just prompted me to surrender my life to God. It's the hard that makes you say, I can't do it when you really realize I can't do it. I just remember sitting in that grocery store parking lot, and I'm like, I can't, I'm done. I give up. Then I thought, no, this is not giving up. It's just giving it over. I think that that's the difference. If you are in a position, and you're listening, and you think I can't surrender to God because that means I'm giving up on my child. it's not giving up on your child. It's not giving in to the diagnosis, my son has a terminal disease that they are doing clinical trials. They are trying to find a cure. I pray daily for a cure, but I also know that it's going to be in God's timing, if and when that happens. Me surrendering to God, and surrendering my child to him does not mean that I'm giving up, or that I won't help fight for a cure. It just means that I'm giving him over to God, and I think that there's a big difference. So we're talking about all of this. I would like to know what the act of surrendering looks like for you guys. Carrie, do you want to start with this?

Carrie M Holt  11:49  
Sure. So you are listening to someone who really struggles with control. I know, I've mentioned this before, but I am the firstborn, typical type A. I like to be the one orchestrating all the stuff. I want to be the one who drives the car because I want to be the one who's in control. I would say this, kind of just what Amy said to start is surrender for me, is not graceful. It reminds me of Jacob wrestling with God and, and saying. God had to put his hip out of joint. That's what surrender I think sometimes looks like for me. It is just a daily practice of saying, Okay, Lord, this is yours. Sometimes it's an hourly practice of deep breathing and saying, Okay, Lord, this is yours. I had this happen yesterday, actually. We were going to a follow-up. My son had a spinal fusion surgery in May, and we finally had our six-month follow-up. He's had a couple of little things related to this appointment that I was concerned about, and I started to feel the anxiety settle in on me. We've had this happen before we've, I've unknowingly gone into an appointment, and we walked out with another surgery date with our lives being turned upside down. I just kept thinking this is going to happen again. This is going to happen again. I felt like the Lord said to me, Carrie, just breathe, and trust the outcome to me. For me, I know a lot of surrender is developing that relationship with God that I can trust Him because it's hard to give up. It's hard to give it over to the Lord, when we don't know him, and when we feel like we can't trust him. That's a little bit of what it looks like for me. Again, I have this tendency to take it back over and over again, but it's resting and waiting, and daily giving in sometimes hourly, giving things up to Him in prayer.

Sara Clime  14:23  
I love how you said that surrender is not graceful, and that is so true. You were talking about Jacob, and I immediately thought of Job, finally kneeling naked. I'm sure that wasn't attractive. That's not the most attractive thing that Job could have done, but he was at that point where it's, "Here I am. I have nothing but you." I think of that often. I don't think surrender needs to be graceful. Again, I think that we have this in our mind of what surrendering, trusting God, relationship with God and all of this looks like. It looks like we picture ministers on t.v. or even our minister on stage. They have their eloquence, and they pray out eloquently. Then here we are. We say, "I don't even know what to say." I'm a hot mess at the grocery store parking lot, and what do I do? For me, it's just being intentional. I have to intentionally make a decision to say it is not mine. It is not mine to hold on to, so this is giving it to God; it's just surrendering it to him. As far as my child is concerned, both of my children, especially TJ, it's that TJ is his. I have to remember, TJ is not even really mine to surrender to him. I have him for a brief period of time until he goes home, to be with God. There's really nothing to surrender to him other than my own feelings where that's concerned. Hopefully, that helps somebody else, but it helps me to think that or just to know that. Amy, what about you? What's the act of surrendering look like?

Amy J. Brown  16:10  
I guess I would say, like Carrie, I don't always do it gracefully. There's a lot of bargaining that goes on. I think the reason that we're afraid to surrender is we're afraid of what God is going to ask of us. I really love what Carrie said about when we stop looking at our special needs child as a project, that means we also have to stop looking at ourselves as maybe we're helping God in the process, but we're not in charge. When we stop looking that we have to be the ones to make all the decisions, and as you said, you got to put it in God's hands. For me, I like to know what's going to happen. I may say that I'm surrendering, and have this nice little prayer, "I give it all to you God," but then I want to know. What's it going to look like? One of the things that help me is that I will say when I'm struggling with something that I need to surrender. The first question I'll ask God is, what do you want me to know about this? That will be my prayer for several days, because I kind of tend to want to dig deep and learn everything I can, which, which is not a bad thing. It's also not a listening posture when I'm filling my brain with all the possible ways God may answer this or not answer it. The first question I ask is,  what do I need to know about this situation? Then the next thing is, what do you want me to hold in my hands about this particular situation? Because it's rare in our life, in general, but especially as special needs moms that okay, this is the one thing I've surrendered the answer's nice and tidy. We're done. It's a constant, muddied, intertwined life of surrendering if that makes sense. If I think about a big surrender, it overwhelms me, and then I start to get back into a controlling kind of feeling. I think, okay, it's the next step walking with God. What do I need to know about today? I may not know what's going to happen next week or the next week, but I just know today this is what God wants me to know about the situation. One of my hardest things is surrendering my need to know. So those are prayers that I have a lot.

Carrie M Holt  18:32  
I would love to add too. One of the things that I've just really been learning in the last six months is for me, surrendering means surrendering the need to fix it, which I think is huge for us as special needs moms. We get that letter from the insurance company, and we get this problem that comes in on a daily basis. Immediately I just want to tackle it and fix it and have it be done and gone because it's emotionally and mentally exhausting to have it kind of weighing over us. It sort of feels like when you were in the grocery store or in church misbehaving, and your mom or dad would say we'll talk about this when we get home. There's that horrible feeling of this tension.  Amy, I love what you said. I think we do it to protect our hearts and ourselves because we're afraid. We're afraid of how painful it's going to be or afraid of what God is asking for us. I have really been trying to train myself, if it's not urgent if it's not life-threatening to just wait on God and not spout off the email in my anger and frustration. Even if it's just half an hour of praying first. I have this sign up on the wall above my desk that says, "Pray first," because I have a tendency to jump in and fix it first and pray later. So for me sometimes surrender is not sending the email, not picking up the phone. It's waiting and asking God to help me or to work it out in such a way where I'm waiting to hear his voice.

Sara Clime  20:32  
I would also like to say for me, that this is just more of a practical thing that I do. Whenever I think of surrender, I think of how much God cares for me. Because I think when we just we surrender, we feel as women, as moms, that we are dumping all of our issues on God. Sometimes it's not a lack of trust, I think it's just a lack of, I love God and I respect him, and he doesn't want to have to deal with the inhaler issue. In my mind, that's what I feel. One of the things that I do, and I actually wrote it out. I just used packing tape to laminate it, and I'm using quotes. It's shoddy, but it works, and I have it in my wallet. It just says God knows the number of hairs on your head. Scripture tells us he has every strand of hair, He has them numbered. Y'all I have a lot of hair. Ever since I was a little girl when I heard that, I would think, "Wow!" because everybody was telling me how much hair I have. That's a lot of hair. So he has to really really know me. It just always blew me away. I have that, and I will pull it out every once in a while when I need to be reminded of God's goodness, and how much he cares for me. Whenever I remember, he has every hair on my head, numbered, it reminds me that that is how much he pays attention to me. That's how much he loves me. That's how much he wants from me. That's just something practical I do. It's not just when it's surrendering. I think of it when I'm angry. I think he has every hair on my head numbered, does he want what's about to come out of my mouth, coming out of my mouth? Whenever I'm sad, and I'm in a closet, and I'm crying and I feel lonely, or whatever it is, I always pull that out. That's just something, if you have a favorite scripture, laminate it do whatever.  It doesn't need to be pretty, but just stick that in your wallet, you can always just pull that out, whatever makes you feel closer to God to remind you how much he loves us specifically. Not you, as in all of us, but you as the individual.

Amy J. Brown  22:58  
I think that's such a good point, Sara because we're talking about surrendering. We can name hundreds of things that we need to surrender, but it all comes down to the idea that we are loved and cared for and seen by God. Because I think underneath the surrender is not oh, should I do this. For instance, sending our daughter to residential was hard, but really underneath that was grief and pain, and heartache. If we go deep enough, it's: is God seeing me and loving me in this? If we know that we're seen and loved. I think...not that surrender is ever going to be easy, maybe it is for more holy people than me, but that's the piece that helps us surrender without just gritting our teeth and doing it. That's the piece I think that is so important is knowing that we are seen and loved. If we know that and that we're in loving hands, it makes it a little bit easier.

Sara Clime  24:01  
I think when we surrender to God that's when. I mean he can do his best work without me surrendering to Him. I mean, he's not up there going, man, I really hope Sara surrenders to me so I can really get to work. I really think that he's not a God that forces himself on us. Just because we're Christians doesn't mean that all of a sudden, we get baptized or we claim our faith, we get saved again, whatever that looks like that. God is all of a sudden is like, okay, now I have 100% control over their life. He does, but he's not going to do that. So consistently. I have to say, "Okay, God, I give this to you." There are times when I really think that God just says, okay, now is when we're going to do the deep work, Sara. This is where we're going to get. This is where we're really going to get to it. We're talking about all of this surrendering and what we do. We can all agree that none of us do it gracefully. It's not always pretty. I think that this was a hard question for me to ask. I don't know if it's gonna be a hard one for you guys to answer. Was there a time that you can share where or what it meant when you failed to surrender to God? What was the cost? How did that look?

Carrie M Holt  25:22  
For me, it was about nine years ago, when I felt this impression on my spirit that I needed to pull our older two kids out of school. They were in fourth in second grade at the time and start homeschooling. I'm a former teacher. I was one of those people who said, I'll never homeschool. You have to be careful what you say. I just wrestled and wrestled and wrestled with God. At the time I was in a Bible study, we were studying the book of Genesis. Every week, there would be discussion questions in our study that would say things like: What is God asking you to step out in faith to do? What are you afraid of? What's keeping you from stepping out in faith to do this? I resisted and resisted and resisted. I think for me, the cost of initially not surrendering to that was a lot of fear, anxiety, me trying to figure out, wanting to know well, how it was going to work. What does the end result look like? I'm a long-term planner. Our oldest was in fourth grade. I wanted to know what his high school years were going to look like, and where are we going to do this for the rest of our lives? The Lord was just saying, I'm asking you just to take this next step. You're not going to know the outcome of eight years from now. I'm just asking you to take the next step. Once I finally did surrender to it, even without knowing all the details and having everything figured out. Again, that comes back to my desire to control. There was such peace that came in like Amy was mentioning earlier. I will say the cost was a lot of just disconnect from God and a lot of fear and anger. Honestly, it was the mental exhaustion of just trying to figure it all out on my own.

Amy J. Brown  27:35  
Okay, I have the opposite story.

Sara Clime  27:37  
I love it when this happens.

Amy J. Brown  27:41  
I was a homeschool mom for 19 years, and we decided to place our daughter in school. I was doing the opposite. I was doing the same thing Carrie was but in opposite direction. I think so often we miss the beauty and the blessing of what God has for us because we have a preconceived idea of how something should be. Or we said we'd never do something, or we have a preconceived idea about who we should be as moms. The first day that she went to school, I sat on my back porch. I remember this, it was in April. It wasn't super warm in Michigan, but there was enough sun for me to be out there. I cried my eyes out. I cried because I felt guilty. I cried because I was relieved that I didn't have to worry about her. I will say that about a weekend, we did get a call. She didn't last long, and that started my whole thing of okay, here we go to another school. But I just had the idea, I'm a homeschool mom, I've always been a homeschool mom, and this is how everyone knows me. What are people gonna think of me? I did get some pretty negative comments, and that goes both ways. I'm not saying only homeschool moms will give you a negative comment if you put your kid in school. It goes both ways. But for me, it was basically was doing the same thing Carrie was doing but in the opposite direction. I've had to learn over the course of my life as a mom that those preconceived ideas just hold you back from seeing the beauty. For somebody who likes things to be figured out and know how it's going to be. Those are hard to give up and surrender, but it was the right choice. It was a good choice for our family.

Sara Clime  29:37  
We talked about what it means to fail and what the cost is. I'd like to talk about the blessings we've received too. I feel that those are so much more than the cost. If you decided to surrender that is, let me put that caveat in there. Carrie, what about you? What are some of the blessings that you've received from full surrender to God?

Carrie M Holt  30:00  
Well, I think sometimes it's just the lack of stress. It is the release that this is not on me that God has a perfect plan, and I can trust him. I think about those verses in Philippians a lot, and I know that we have heard them so many times. They have just sunk into my soul about when we're not anxious about a lot of things because that peace guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I think about this when our son was an infant in the ICU, and he was literally hanging on to life by a thread. I look back, and now sometimes even in my flesh, and in my mind, I can't comprehend how we survived walking through something so difficult. I also can see how, when I wasn't trying to figure everything out, and I was just trusting God for the next minute, sometimes, and sometimes even our son's next breath, God was protecting me. I never once in those moments, sunk into the deep fear of us losing him. I think some of that was just naivety, and some of it was just God, protecting my mind and allowing me to learn that deep, sweet relationship that we can have when we've given it up to him. I guess what I'm trying to say is just the peace that comes. That's been a huge blessing.

Amy J. Brown  31:49  
I was recently talking to a friend. I've been a mom, for 29 years. I've shared, we've had some pretty significant mental health issues in our home recently. I was talking to my friend about them, and she's known me for years. She said, "Boy, you have come a long way. 10 years ago, you would have just been so wigged out about this, and really anxious." Sometimes I don't think I'm getting anywhere on the surrender game, but I think I am because I definitely know that I'm not the gardener. I can help till the ground, but God makes things grow. God gives life. That is kind of a freeing idea for me. I think about the gifts of surrendering, because of the nature of a life of a special needs mom, I think that I notice the beauty of the moment, way more than I ever would have. Because we all know that me surrendering today doesn't mean that next week, there's not going to be another crisis. I think we've talked about this before, we're always afraid. As Carrie said, she doesn't send off the email right away. Part of the reason that we want to rush to do things is we know there's something's around the corner, always. I think surrender has helped me not be so anxious about that next thing around the corner. I've made it a practice to really try to be in the present moment, and I don't always do it well, and to notice the beauty of what is in the situation I'm in and that beauty may be seeing a patch of sun in the parking lot while I'm waiting outside the pharmacy. I mean it. It may not even be anything very dramatic, but knowing that I am not the gardener, that God is the person who sows and as has been very life-changing for me. Then it's that peace Carrie talks about. I don't always have that peace when I'm in the midst of it, but when the minute I say oh yeah, I'm not in charge, I can step back.

Sara Clime  33:48  
I think for me, once I realized I need to surrender. I mean, it's a continuous process for me. It's not just a one-time thing. Once I realized that by surrendering and ultimately relinquishing control, it has shown me not how weak I am, that I had to give up control, but it showed me exactly how strong I truly am. By giving up the control, I wasn't meant to hold on to, holding the things I'm not meant to hold on to, opens my hands up to the things that God's trying to give me. I can't hold on to all of this with my left hand. If it's closed on the things I'm not meant to hold on to. It's not open to what God's trying to give me. Once I relinquished all of that, or I continually remind myself every day that I need to relinquish it, I realize I'm strong enough for this life. I didn't because I surrendered. My son wasn't diagnosed because I surrendered. I'm able to be a special needs mom, and I'm able to be strong, joyful, and hopeful, for the most part, not all the time. I always have to put that caveat in there before people think that we're just joyful and happy all the time. I'm able to, for the most part, have that posture of joy and have the posture of gratitude, because I've surrendered. Like both of you have said, it just is that peace of mind. It's priceless. There's nothing that can ever replace that feeling of finally saying, I'm going to fight tooth and nail for my child, but I don't have to in every single way. I can do it knowing that ultimately, everything's going to be fine. There's just a different posture, I think when you surrender. I love that. 

Sara Clime  35:50  
So we're going to end it here. Thank you guys so much for being open and honest and vulnerable. I think surrendering to God, I think it's a more difficult topic than people talk about, especially for some of us who like control. I think, as special needs moms, in general, we like control. We go into it knowing we have to fight for pretty much everything our children have. Knowing that we don't have to in every regard is pretty refreshing. Thank you for your guys' input today. Carrie, would you like to close us out in prayer?

Carrie M Holt  36:28  
Yes, I'd love to. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you have taught us about surrender, that it is about us giving control over to you, and not about quitting, but about us trusting. We pray for our listeners that if they're struggling with surrender, and wrestling with this, I pray, Father, that you will be present and show them that you are trustworthy, that you love them, and that they are worthy. They are chosen. They are redeemed. And what you're offering, the peace that you offer them is so much more than the mental anguish of us trying to just figure it all out on our own. We thank you that you surrendered to the cross, and were the perfect example of that. You surrendered to life here on earth, and all of the hardships that brought and the pain and agony and sorrow, so that we could have this wonderful relationship and connection with you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Sara Clime  37:51  
Thanks for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you're walking on this journey with us. If you have any questions or comments follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from our listeners. Thanks for listening. Next week Amy will be kicking us off talking about the lies we believe.