08: When You Realize You Can’t Fix This

What do you do when you realize you cannot fix what’s happening?

If you’ve been trying to hold everything together, carrying situations that remain unresolved, or lying awake thinking about people you love and cannot rescue, this episode might feel familiar.

In this episode of Walking Anyway, I talk about helplessness, loss of control, and the grief of realizing that love doesn’t always grant us power. We explore what it means to stay present in seasons where life feels uncertain, prayer feels unfinished, and no amount of effort can force resolution.

In this episode:

• why thoughtful people often try to emotionally carry outcomes they cannot control
• the difference between caring and carrying
• what Jesus in Gethsemane shows us about helplessness, presence, and faith

Not everything unresolved is asking you to fix it.

If this is where you are right now, I hope this episode helps you loosen your grip a little on what was never yours to carry alone.

Links + Resources From This Episode:

• Get the monthly letter
• Find me on Instagram @denisa.o.nica
• Download a transcript of this, and every episode at www.denisaonica.com

Find Denisa Elsewhere:

• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Join Denisa's Substack
• Start with a 21-day Guest Seat at The Table
• Order Kairos, When The Holy Meets The Daily

Episode Website

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

I'm Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You're listening to episode 8.

Speaker 0:08

This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet. If this is your first time listening in, this is a place for anyone carrying questions of any kind and for any reason, and is not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady and true. If this is your experience, you're in the right place to keep walking anyway.

Speaker 0:37

Each week I offer a reflection and a simple way to faithfully walk one more step. I'm an author and spiritual director and the founder of The Table, a contemplative space shaped by a weekly rhythm where women practice this kind of faithful living together at their own pace in the middle of their real lives and faith. I live in Spain where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention and the way I live inside my own life. This week I'll share how learning to release what I can't control is becoming an essential spiritual practice in my own formation. Listen in.

Speaker 1:20

Recently, I was taking a break from writing and sitting outside in the sun for a few minutes. I started using one of those hourglasses on my desk lately, mostly because I'm trying to step away a little from alarms and digital reminders, and all the way our lives are constantly buzzing at us. There's something more embodied and somehow more real about watching that sand slowly fall. Something about physically seeing time pass instead of being startled by it. So when the sand runs out, I try to get up and move around for a few minutes before sitting back down again. And that day, I had to carry my coffee outside and was just letting my brain settle for a minute. And sitting there in the quiet of the early afternoon, I realized how much energy I had been spending trying to hold together things that were never fully mine to control. The kind of caring that looks like very responsible from the outside.

Speaker 2:20

And sitting there in the sun, I suddenly realized I was trying to fix something that may not actually be fixable right now. Or maybe not fixable by me. And I think part of being a person is discovering there are entire categories of pain that don't respond to effort in the way we hoped they would. You can love someone deeply and still not be able to rescue them. Because love doesn't always grant us powers and not everything painful can be prevented. And you can pray sincerely and still not receive clarity right away. You can have the hard conversations, read the books, go to therapy, make the spreadsheet, um, take the walk, say the prayer, talk it through with your friend for the sixth time, and still find yourself standing in the middle of something unresolved.

Speaker 3:17

Maybe it's an argument with your sister that still aches even after you've apologized three times, a child you love who is struggling and you cannot fix it for them, a marriage that feels tender and distant at the same time, a medical result you keep checking your phone for, or a friendship that quietly changed and never really recovered. A grief that returns the moment the house finally gets quiet. And if you're sitting inside something similar to this that is unresolved right now, I don't think that means you're doing faith wrong. And if you feel tired or numb or unsure what to pray anymore, I don't think God is shocked by that either. I think for many of us, especially thoughtful, responsible, spiritually earnest people, our instinct is to carry more, to hold tighter, to try harder emotionally. Because if I can somehow hold all the pieces together long enough, maybe nothing will fall apart.

Speaker 4:19

Sometimes I catch myself trying to manage the future emotionally before it arrives. Part of me still believes if I think hard enough, I can prevent pain. And honestly, I don't always know how to love something without trying to control the outcome. I think that's especially true for people who learned early on that being useful kept them safe. People who became good at anticipating needs, managing atmospheres, holding everything together, and being the calm one, the capable one, the reliable one. I think here of women staying awake mentally, trying to manage adult children emotionally from two countries away, which to be clear is a very specific example, and absolutely not me casually calling myself out in the middle of my own podcast episode. I also think of women refreshing test results at midnight, women carrying miscarriages, finances, aging parents, uncertainty, loneliness, everyone else's emotions, while quietly wondering why they feel exhausted all the time. And I know I've mostly been talking about women here, partly because I am one and partly because many of the women I sit with carry this kind of invisible emotional responsibility all the time. But I don't think men are strangers to this either. The quiet pressure to hold everything together, to stay steady, to protect the people you love, and to carry more than you can actually carry. And eventually it becomes difficult to tell the difference between love and responsibility, between caring and carrying. Sometimes you start believing that if something falls apart, it must somehow be your fault for not holding it together well enough.

Speaker 6:22

Of course, we're tired. It's exhausting trying to carry outcomes no human being can fully control. Dallas Willard once wrote that human beings are not made to carry the weight of omniscience and omnipotence. In other words, we are not God. Which sounds obvious until you realize how much anxiety and honestly grief comes from not being in control, trying to prevent loss, to hold together outcomes we were never fully meant to control. Trying to protect the people we love from pain. And there is grief in realizing your love cannot do that. I think some of us are tired not only because life is hard, but because we are trying to emotionally carry tomorrow before it arrives. And maybe that's why this particular part of the gospel has been on my mind lately.

Speaker 7:21

Jesus in Gethsemane, awake in the middle of the night while everyone else sleeps, knowing what is coming. And there's no hidden solution underneath the lesson. There's no sudden escape route. He doesn't avoid or fix reality. He just enters fully into a reality he doesn't remove yet. And this astounds me. Jesus trembles. Jesus grieves. He asks if the cup can pass. And still morning comes, the cross still awaits. The situation doesn't suddenly resolve itself overnight. I don't know about you, but for me there's something strangely comforting in realizing that even Jesus doesn't meet suffering by controlling it. Mostly he meets it with presence. Because control often feels safer than presence. Fixing feels safer than grief. And helplessness exposes the illusion that we can save ourselves and other people. And I don't think most of us naturally welcome helplessness, especially if you're competent and if you're the one people rely on, or if you've spent years being the strong one. But eventually there comes a moment where effort stops producing certainty. And in that moment you are left standing there with your love, with your prayers, your unfinished life, and your very human limitations.

Speaker 8:55

The truth is we've absorbed this idea that if we do things correctly, life should eventually become manageable. That healing somehow should arrive in linear ways, wisdom should eliminate confusion, and that faith should remove uncertainty. But real life is rarely that tidy. Life is not this machine where correct inputs guarantee correct outcomes. And I thank God for that, because if life truly functioned like a giant spiritual performance review, most of us would be in trouble by tomorrow afternoon. What is happening is some situations stubbornly refuse to become teachable moments. Some griefs linger, some prayers remain unfinished for a very long time. The Psalms know this well. How long, O Lord? Not how long until I learned the lesson, just how long. Recently, I was listening to an interview with Tish Harrison Warren about her new book, What Grows in Weary Lands, on the Regent College podcast. And she was talking about how ordinary life continues when the heart is breaking. And that sentence stayed with me because it's so true. Yes, the dishwasher still needs emptying while your heart is breaking. And strangely enough, I think God meets us there. Right in the middle of that ordinary unfinished life.

Speaker 10:34

Now, I used to think surrender meant becoming detached somehow, caring less, wanting less, needing less. But I don't think that's it anymore. I think maybe surrender is continuing to love while releasing the illusion of control. Not giving up responsibility, but giving up omnipotence. Which frankly was never ours anyway. And maybe that's the invitation here. Not to stop caring or become passive or uninvolved. And not to pretend things don't hurt. But to slowly stop carrying what was never ours to carry alone. To let ourselves be human again and to let God remain God. And maybe the holiest thing some of us can do this week is stop trying to carry tomorrow before it arrives.

Speaker 11:30

Maybe this week, instead of trying to solve what cannot be solved tonight, you do something smaller. Maybe you take a glass of water and leave it somewhere you'll see it, on your desk, by your bed, or near the kitchen sink. And every time you notice yourself trying to control something you cannot actually control, every time helplessness arises, or every time you feel the ache of not being able to fix what matters to you, or every time you catch yourself caring tomorrow before it arrives, add a little spoonful of salt to the water. Very slowly, one spoonful at a time. And hear me when I say this. The purpose of this simple, unconventional practice is not to make the feeling disappear or to spiritually bypass what hurts. It's just to let something outside of your body hold it for a while. To tell the truth. This is heavy. This matters. I cannot fix this. And maybe by the end of the week, the water becomes a kind of witness, clouded in the evening light, salt gathering quietly at the bottom of the glass, holding what you could not carry alone. Maybe you sit beside it one evening after the dishes are done and the house finally feels quiet. And maybe you remember not everything unresolved is asking you to fix it. Love doesn't always grant us power. And perhaps you pray something small. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you simply let yourself be human for a moment. Could that be prayer too?

Speaker 13:19

Blessed are you recognizing the limits of your own power. Blessed are you opening your eyes to reality as it actually is, instead of exhausting yourself trying to force it into something else. Blessed are you learning to release what is beyond your power to change, control, understand, or carry alone. And in the meantime, may you keep lighting the candle, may you keep returning to your life. May you keep discovering that even here, God is still present in the unfinished middle of things.

Speaker 14:02

Thanks for listening to episode 8 of Walking Anyway. And if you'd like a quieter place to continue reflecting on these kinds of conversations, you can join my letters. At the end of each month, I send a more personal note with a few reflection questions, small things I'm noticing in my own life, and the kinds of thoughts and stories I don't really share anywhere else. I'd love to see you there. You can use the link in the show notes to join. And if this episode resonated with you, you can follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. If someone came to mind while you were listening today, maybe send this episode to them too.

Speaker 15:10

As always, you can find me online at denisaonica.com or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica where I post almost daily either a photo or a video on Instagram stories. I'd love to see you there too. Now, as you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you and let that be enough for today.

Speaker 15:35

Just like light moving through a room, you don't need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here. I'll close with a poem by Wendell Berry called The Peace of Wild Things. "When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water, and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free."

Speaker 16:25

Thanks for listening, and I'll be here with you next time.