It is 4:30 on a humid Thursday morning. The birds are quiet, the crickets are chirping, and I just finished reading a reflection I wrote about a year and a half ago. It actually made me chuckle out loud. Not because what I wrote was funny, but because I was reading about what I thought were problems then while sitting here thinking about the season of life I am in now. For a moment I caught myself thinking, “Man, what I would give to have those problems again.”

But isn’t that so human? Isn’t it so easy for us to look at the season of life we are currently in and romanticize about yesterday, convincing ourselves that life was so much simpler then?

The truth is, it really wasn’t.

There are days when Kim and I will drive by one of the houses we lived in when our family was younger. I will look over at her and say, “Wow, life seemed so simple then.” The kids were little. We had jobs, not businesses. Our world seemed smaller. Looking back from where we are today, those memories feel a little more warm and a lot more peaceful.

But I have to remind myself that we had worries then too. We had bills we don’t have now. We were raising our kids. We had decisions we didn’t know how to make. We had fears about the future. We had struggles in our marriage, struggles as parents, financial pressures, and plenty of nights when we wondered if and how everything was going to work out.

It didn’t feel so simple while we were living it. Maybe yesterday feels simpler because we already know how it turned out.

We know we survived it. We know now which doors eventually opened. We know which prayers were answered differently than we expected. We know there was somehow enough. We can look backward and see God’s fingerprints on situations that made absolutely no sense while we were standing in them.

So, yeah, today is different because we don’t know yet. We are still standing in the middle of the story.

As I read that old reflection this morning, I noticed how much of it was about me becoming more. I wanted to be a better leader, a better husband, a better father, more disciplined, more accountable, and more prepared for whatever God had planned next. I wrote about how many of the delays in my life were self-induced, that perhaps God was not making me wait at all. Maybe He had been waiting for me to arrive.

There is still some truth in that, of course.

There are so many things I should’ve addressed sooner. There are conversations I should’ve had. There are areas where I should’ve held myself more accountable so I could better hold others accountable. There are decisions in the business that probably would’ve been easier had I made them earlier.

I don’t want to use faith as an excuse to avoid responsibility. But I see something else in those words now.

I was carrying an awful lot.

Somewhere along the way, I think I began believing that if I could just become disciplined enough, wise enough, strong enough, patient enough, and good enough, everything would eventually come together. The business would take off. The whole team would finally get it. The financial pressure would ease. I would become the leader I believed I was supposed to be.

And if I am being vulnerable, there were times I wanted other people to recognize it too.

I wanted people to see me as a good leader. I wanted someone to look at what we had built, what we had learned, what we had overcome, and say, “You really know what you are doing.”

At times I have imagined coaching or consulting other business owners someday. I don’t know whether something like that is in my future. What I do know is that the last several years have taught me something very humbling. The more I learn, the more aware I become of how much more I have to learn. This year has taught me that more than any other year in my life.

So, maybe that is not a delay. Maybe that is just preparation when I thought I was already prepared.

What I am still learning, is that there is a tremendous difference between responsibility and control. God calls me to responsibility. He asks me to lead well, love my wife well, love my kids well, serve my team well, steward the business well, tell the truth, admit when I am wrong, and continue growing.

But nowhere did He promise me control over the outcome or what will happen tomorrow.

I can lead my team, but I cannot make every person get it. I can make the best decisions I know how to make for the business, but I cannot guarantee tomorrow. I can love my children with everything I have, but I cannot live their lives for them. I can love my wife deeply, but I cannot remove every burden she carries. And I can follow God faithfully without knowing exactly where He is taking me.

That last one is especially hard for me.

I know I’m not alone in this. Like many others, I like knowing. I like fixing things. I like plans. I like feeling as though I am doing something to move the ball forward.

So I pray.

I tell God what is bothering me. I tell Him that I trust Him. I place the burden down at His feet.

Then I stand up, turn around, take a few steps, and begin walking away. Then I think about it again, turn around, walk right back over, and pick the burden up again.

I wonder how many times I have done that.

“God, I give You this business.” Then I spend the day worrying about the business.

“God, I trust You with my family.” Then I spend my time trying to fix them.

“God, Your will be done.” Then I start explaining to Him what His will should look like.

So, this year, I’m beginning to understand that surrender isn’t something we do once. It is something we have to practice every single day. Maybe every morning we have to decide again what God has actually placed in our hands, and what we have simply chosen to carry.

A year and a half ago, I was asking myself, “What do I need to become so I can reach my potential?” This morning I am asking something completely different.

“What am I carrying that God never asked me to carry?”

Maybe some of our exhaustion is not simply from the weight of life. Maybe some of it comes from trying to carry things that were never ours to carry.

I still believe God has more for me. I am just beginning to understand that His more may look nothing like the version I created in my own mind. Maybe His more is more trust. More surrender. More patience. More presence with my wife. More listening to my kids. More grace with my team. More dependence on Him.

I mean, John 3:30 says it very simply. “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Maybe for me, decreasing looks a lot like loosening my grip. Less of me deciding how everything needs to turn out and more willingness to trust where God is leading, even when I cannot see where we are going.

Faith is not believing that everything will work out the way I hope. Faith is trusting that God is still God when it doesn’t.

The season you are walking through today may be incredibly difficult. Someday you may look back on parts of this season and remember them differently too.

Maybe the goal is not to get life back to simple. Maybe the goal is learning to carry life more simply.

And when we finally lay something down at God’s feet, perhaps the real act of faith is resisting the urge to walk back over there and pick it up again.

Practice to Cultivate

Before you begin trying to solve everything today, ask yourself one question: “What am I carrying that God has asked me to trust Him with?”

Name it. Pray about it. Place it at His feet.

Then, when you catch yourself reaching for it again later today, remind yourself, “I already gave that to Him.”

Because laying down a burden is one thing.

Learning to leave it there is where surrender begins. I am still learning.

‘Well Rooted’ is written by Jeremy Elliott. Elliott owns a lawncare business and lives in the Great Bend area.