What If Surrender Is The Bravest Plan?

Control can feel like safety until life proves you were never really in charge. I’m recording from Dubai after a full, fast season, and I wanted to share the thread I keep seeing in my own life and in so many people around me: we say we trust God, but we still grip the outcome with white knuckles, especially when things start changing.

I open up about months of right-leg pain that forced me to slow down, cancel plans, and stop looking outside myself for constant answers. When tests came back “fine,” the deeper work began. That pain turned into a spiritual practice that showed me exactly where fear lives in my body, how my mind builds worst-case stories, and how shifting my focus changes my whole experience. I also share what happened on a trip through India, Singapore, and Bali, when discomfort brought me back to prayer in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Then I take you to an Easter conversation with someone living with a rare stage four breast cancer diagnosis. We talk about fear, suffering, bravery, and the choice we still have inside circumstances we cannot control: how we want to experience this moment. If you’re navigating change, chronic stress, illness, or uncertainty, this will meet you where you are. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs this, and leave a review telling me where you’re ready to loosen the reins.

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Transcript

Welcome Back From A Full Season

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Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of Journey to the Soul. I am so so happy to be sitting here with you today. It's been quite a while since I last recorded something, and after a while I just yearn to have a conversation, to write, to share. So it's been a little bit, and I'm so so happy to be here and be having this conversation with you today. We are actually in Dubai and we've been here for the last three weeks. Life has been extra full the last couple of weeks. I feel like April and May just flew by, and now we're in June getting ready to welcome summer in just a few weeks, and there's been so much going on in life in general. So it's been a little bit crazy, but I am so looking forward to having you here with me today as we dive into today's episode. I know that the next couple of weeks are gonna be a little bit all over the place since well, really, months since we're gonna be here and I will be traveling around for the next couple of months. So I feel like my posting will stay kind of inconsistent. But when I come and sit and have a chat with you guys, it's gonna be with such a full heart. So definitely keep an eye out for the episodes that I will be recording. I'm really looking forward to just being here and connecting with you all in this way again. So if it's your first time here, welcome. I am so, so happy to have you here. I am so blessed and lucky to have you here sharing this space with me. If you've been here with me, welcome back. It is so so nice to have you all

Why Control Blocks New Beginnings

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here. So today's episode is actually something that I had wanted to record for a while, and it was a conversation that I had with someone on Easter, so this was back in April, but it really is something that stuck with me because it's something that I have been in my experience with deeply, and I know that other people have been in the same experience, and I feel like it's something that's become more highlighted so that we can become more aware of it. And so much of what I share is stuff that I am learning, I have learned, or things that people are going through collectively, and that's something that I'm hyper aware of. It's something that I feel like intuitively, somatically. So I guess it's one of the ways that I tune in, one of my gifts, I guess you could say. So this is something that I feel like collectively people have been moving through. But for me, my experience with it has been months in the making. So when I had this conversation with someone on Easter, it was something that I'm like, mmm, we need to dive deeper into this. And it's essentially how we don't trust God and how we still hold on to control in certain areas of our lives, or we don't trust that life is happening for us. And the energy of now is so different than the energy of the last year or two. And I know we talked quite a bit about the energy of last year, you know, in different podcast episodes, but the energy of now is one of change, of innovation, of expansion, so it's very different, but the only way that that can happen is if we fully accept where we are being asked to go. So where God, the creator, the universe, whatever you connect to, whatever God wants us to move towards, because ultimately that's what's meant for us in this time of change. It wants to give us what we want and usher something new in. But the only way that that can happen is if we move from where we are. And we've talked about fear a lot. We talk about fear a lot in general because fear keeps us rooted in place. And so much of us believe that if we just hold on a little tighter, that we will weather the storm and eventually it'll pass because that's what we've always done. That's what we know. But what if this moment right now, this season of change, what if it's asking our soul to simply loosen the reins, to allow space to let something new in. Not what you've always known, but something beyond what you could imagine. But the only way that we can usher that in is by not reacting to things as we always have, and allow that space that we create by loosening the run the reins to give way to a gift that's been given to us. So we do this by accepting, by softening, by allowing. This is a completely different energy to how fear normally controls us or keeps us rooted in place, which is by controlling, fighting, or resisting. But it's that space when we soften and allow that we are trying to welcome in. And I want to share how this has shown up in my life over the last couple of months. I can't remember if I've shared some of this. I feel like I have, briefly, in a podcast episode a few months

A Leg Injury Becomes A Practice

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back. But for the last couple of months, I have been having issues with my right leg. When it started bothering me back in August, so it's gonna be almost a year, I tried everything and I saw everyone. Physical therapist, chiropractor, I saw specialists, and I did so much of what they suggested: rest, taking a step back from working out, you know, not being on my leg. They even suggested cortisone injections, I think it was. Yeah, it was cortisone injections. I did not do that, but I was trying to figure out what was wrong. And I basically took a step back from working out, from walking, to really just rest and lay and sit more than I have in, I think ever, honestly. Because the pain and the discomfort in my right leg got so bad where I couldn't walk on my leg. Some days I could barely, well, a lot of for a couple of weeks I could barely shower or stand up. I had to ask for help a lot. Now that I'm saying this, I feel like I have shared some of this in a podcast episode. So it really started affecting my daily life, and this was a long time coming because I did feel something in my leg for a while. Like I started going to the chiropractor probably a year and a half before this started happening because I knew something was off with my leg. And this minor chiropractic adjustments just helped momentarily, but it got to a point where I couldn't walk. When I did some kind of workout or movement, it really flared up, and then I just got to a point where I couldn't walk anymore. So I went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out, you know, what was going on with my leg. Everyone thought it was something different, and I got X-rays and a CT scan done. And when I got the CT scan, it had already been a couple of weeks since this had started happening. I had already started doing PT sessions and different things like that. But something in me told me that the CT scans would show up fine, like they would come back as nothing wrong with my leg, nothing that they could visually see. And they did. Nothing showed up on the CT scan or the X-ray. And as the weeks went by and I kept dealing with this every day, I realized that this was happening as a way to slow me down and really learn not to fight or resist what was happening, like my current experience, and to really teach me to react in a different way and to trust my own power, to not pay attention so much to what everyone around me was saying about my experience. So I stopped doing what everyone told me to do and simply trusted my intuition on how to deal with it. So it required me to really tune into that. And this realization of why I was having this experience didn't happen right away. It was actually months after my legs started bothering me that it started happening, like that I started having more clarity on like, oh my gosh, this is what it's teaching me. Because I became more and more aware to how I was reacting to the situation to different things, and how that kept feeding a certain story in my head about something that I had. Since then, it has had its ebbs and flows. There are weeks where it still flares up and I struggle to walk and can't move my body again, and I have to take a step back from everything. And there's weeks where I can walk more or walk freely, like more than I have been able to. And I don't try to make sense of it anymore. I mean, there is like that 20, I'm gonna be honest, there's that 25% of me that still does at times, but I have honestly learned to simply flow with it, to not really question it, to not wonder, or all of these other things. But this experience over the last couple of months has become my spiritual practice because every time that it flares up and slows me down, I am now able to soften and not hold on so tightly to the fear of what could be because that's what I am reacting to, right? It's me being scared that I'm gonna hurt my leg even more. It's me being scared that I'm gonna be out walking and then my leg will crack, something will break, something else will give. And I have really been able to create a new story about this experience. With it, it has completely changed how I am moving through it because ultimately I know that this moment, this experience is temporary, and what I am doing now is what I it wanted to show me. It showed me where my power lies and how when I focus on what I want to focus on, right? How that could change so much of how we experience life.

Travel Pain And A Return To Prayer

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And in February, we were actually in Asia for a trip. We were there for like two and a half weeks, and it really flared up on that trip a lot. You know, when you go to a new place, I was so so excited to be in Asia. We went to India, we went to Singapore, and we went to Bali. So I was really looking forward to doing this trip because it was to places I had never been to. So, you know, I planned everything, I had all these things that I wanted to do. I had a list of places that I wanted to go to, and when we were on this trip, my leg flared up a lot, so I couldn't do much of what I had planned at all. I ended up spending so much of my time laying in bed, and there were a few things that I did go out to do and explore, but it was very limited. But it was stuff that we couldn't cancel or things that I thought I could do because it didn't have that much walking while we were on this trip, and I was out and about exploring whatever it was. There were so many moments where it would really bother me, where I was in so much discomfort. I didn't know how to walk, I didn't know how to stand, but I wanted to be out experiencing and exploring because that's so much of what I love when we travel. So I knew that I couldn't do everything that I wanted to do, but I still wanted to do some things. So my husband calls me stubborn, but I am determined, and I still went out to do a few things because I still wanted to experience some of the places that we were at. So I was limping, I was moving at a snail's pace, I had to ask for help. You know, it was totally not what I had anticipated. But when I was in extreme discomfort or I was walking down the street and just moving so slowly, I would brace myself initially because I was just there was so much fear there about you know hurting myself more, feeling more pain or discomfort. And I found myself on this trip praying to God more than I have in so long. I prayed in those moments where I was so tensed up and just overwhelmed by fear. I prayed because I knew that this was part of a greater purpose, even though I didn't get it. I prayed for him to protect me as I was out and about. I prayed for him to protect my leg and my knee. I prayed to find clarity on what I was meant to be working through because even though I understood it, I knew that there was more there. So I kept praying for clarity on how I could keep moving through this experience and learning what I was meant to be learning. As I started to do that, I realized more and more that up until then I wasn't really trusting God, even though I thought I was. And that the fear that I felt when I went out to walk, or just being out and about and wanting this moment to be different than what it was, not wanting to be in pain, not wanting to have to slow down or change my plans, that wasn't me trusting God and his plan at all. And since then, I have used all those moments, the moments that still come up now, as a chance to pray and to connect to source, and also as an opportunity to change how I am reacting to a situation in which I have no control over, other than how I want to experience the

Choosing Your Experience In Hard Moments

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moment. And I want to make this clear because it's not that we don't move through difficult experiences, we talk about that a lot too, the duality of life that light and dark coexist. That's part of our human experience, but with the difficult experiences, it's how we want to experience those moments. That is our choice. Since we've been in Dubai for the last couple of weeks, I still have moments where it flares up. I am still taking it easy, but it's amazing because I have been able to move my body over the last couple of weeks more than I have in months. I'm still resting, I'm still moving slowly when my body asks me to. If I try to go for a walk and my leg tenses or is tense, I just walk slowly. Because for me, it's not about doing the most or moving the fastest, but it's just about going slow and steady. So I'm really meeting the moment where it is. I've also discovered that when I breathe deeply as I walk, like really deep belly breaths, and when I breathe out, I visualize everything, all the tension that my body is holding on in my body, in my leg, what I'm holding on to still. And I found that when I do that sometimes, or quite a bit of the time, actually, that I'm able to walk much more comfortable. So that has actually been something that's been super helpful. There's something there about me breathing and relaxing and letting go that really just lets my leg like just feel more comfortable or to open up. And I know for me, this is a spiritual lesson that I am meant to be learning now that simply manifested in the physical, and it's all connected, you know, mind, body, soul, it is all connected, and I know one day very soon I'm gonna wake up and be able to walk and move again without any problem, and it will be as you know, the last couple of months have never happened, and the only trace it will leave behind is who I became because of it. Every day it improves, and I celebrate that because that you know where I am now and where I was before is it's already such a huge improvement. But going back to the conversation that I shared at the beginning of this episode with someone that I had at Easter, it was the same general thing about how as humans, where we don't allow ourselves to trust God, where are we still resisting?

Easter Conversation About Cancer And Trust

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And we were invited over to a friend's at Easter. She had a little get together, and it was the first time I was meeting this person, and it was one of her friends, and her and I really connected. That happens sometimes, but she was sharing with me her journey with being diagnosed with a rare form of stage four breast cancer, and what that's been like for her over the past couple of years. It was still relatively new. I think in the last two years, it was something that she started to work through. And as she was sharing all of this, it brought me back to when I was younger because, as a child, I spent so much time at the children's hospital, actually, because someone in my family. Someone very close to me was diagnosed with cancer as a child. So we were homeschooled. Me and my nieces and my nephew, we were homeschooled. So we had flexibility. And when this person in my family was diagnosed with cancer when she was probably 11 or 12, we had the ability to spend a couple days during the week there with her a couple of hours at a time as she got treatment, as she went through different things. So I understood so much of her experience because I was exposed to that as a child. You know, she shared her fears, which she struggled with every day, the fatigue that her body felt, how every day her body was different, you know, the side effects she was having of chemo. And I got it to some degree, and I really felt deeply for what she was going through. And we talked about trusting God. And I shared with her that ultimately there's nothing that she can't do in this life, and that we are given our experiences for a reason. And she was chosen to move through this because not everyone was able to be as brave as her and wake up every day to face what she was facing. And I truly believe that the experiences that we experience in our life, that's something that our soul chose for whatever reason. But because it chose that, regardless of whether we label it good or bad, we have the capacity to move through them. And not everyone does. So we should be so proud of ourselves for how we choose to move through the difficult experiences in our life because not everyone has the capacity to do it the way that we do, you know? And this friend, she shared that, you know, she wasn't afraid of dying, but of the pain. And I told her that maybe this experience wasn't so much about the possibility of her dying, but how she wanted to experience this moment, you know, not overfocusing on the suffering and what could be, but focusing on how this experience is exactly as it should be. And she recognized, she shared, you know, she was she was crying and she was laughing and she was, you know, moving through energy and she recognized that it could be worse than it was, and she held on to that. And since then, I just I wanted to really share because, like you, I've shared in this episode, I have so been in that experience, and I think so many people are being asked to move through things like this right now, and the things that we are still gripping onto will look very different for each of

Where You Can Release Control

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us. After this episode, I would invite you to sit with yourself for a few moments and notice, meditate, sit in quiet, and notice where in your life you are still trying to hold on to control. Where are you resisting? Where are you not trusting that God has your back? And then with that awareness, focus your energy on allowing yourself to relinquish control, what this experience should be, but also on how it could be something beyond anything our human mind could even imagine. Because that's really what this moment is trying to show us. That's really what God is trying to show us, is that this can play out in a way you can't even fathom, in ways our mind can't even understand. But the only way to let that in is to release what we think it should be, how we think it's gonna play out, or the many ways in which it could play out, and just truly release control from that, and just let yourself be in the moment of whatever it is you're meant to be learning. It's such a different energy than how we normally react to change, to fear, to disruption. But with the softening, with the allowing, with the surrender, you are welcoming something in that is completely different. And I feel like that is like the ultimate surrender is trusting that you are protected, that you are supported, that the universe has your back, that God it has your back, that nothing is bad is going to happen to us, right? We want to know that we're gonna be okay, and we are gonna be okay. I know that so many of us are going through very big changes in our lives, and we're being asked to make peace and move through so much right now, but it's because something so amazing wants to come in, and we're all riding this wave together right now. So I want you to remember that, to remember that we're all on this earth experiencing our own human things, and it's okay to be scared, but right now it's such a wonderful thing, and it will be something that you will be so proud of yourself if you are brave and react to this moment in a different way than you always have, because that's really what's gonna create a catalyst for change, for new, for what wants to come into your life. So I hope that this episode came to you at the right time. I know that we're all moving through our own things, but we're all here together. I'm sending you all so much love, so much light, and I will talk to you all in my next episode. Until then.