Stop telling grieving Christians to "surrender."

An honest, good faith plea.

Last Friday, we found ourselves yet again sitting on the floor at the animal hospital, fluorescent lighting beating down on us as we held our limp dog in our arms. This time, we knew what to expect, so it felt less traumatic, less heartbreaking. And where previous vet visits have been all scans and tests, this visit was to trial an actual treatment – it felt like we were moving in the direction of healing. 

Every veterinary professional has coined our dog “a mystery.” His incessant symptoms of pica, anxiety, stiffness, and GI issues all point towards a bacterial imbalance in the gut. We’ve done multiple blood and stool tests, we’ve done a CT scan, we've tried him on special diets, medications, and probiotics. We’ve undergone intense, detailed behavioural modification training. Similar to my own medical story, our sweet little dog has never received a firm diagnosis. The only thing that everyone can agree on is that “something is wrong.”

So rather than piling up more inconclusive test results, we decided to try a different approach and employ a treatment called FMT (it’s gross, so I’ll leave you to Google it if you truly want to know). This treatment is still relatively new in animal medicine (it’s actually been used on humans for far longer), so there is limited data on its effectiveness in cases like Humphrey’s, but every peer-reviewed clinical trial that IS on record shows, at best, immediate improvement to an animal’s symptoms, and at worst, no change at all. In essence, we had nothing to lose other than adding yet another line to our ever-growing list of insurance claims. So, there we found ourselves on Friday, holding our limp dog in our hands and a huge amount of hope in our hearts.

Everyone told us to be cautiously optimistic; we told ourselves that as well. 

“Don’t get your hopes up too much.”

“Take it all in stride.”

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

It’s sound advice. I get it. Setting yourself up with too much hope only results in a much harder crash to rock bottom if your hope leads to nothing. And despite all that, I chose reckless hope.

I have been living with a dog who I can’t take for walks, can’t leave unattended, can’t even sit next to with a blanket on my lap because he is almost guaranteed to start eating and aggressively guarding the blanket. His anxiety prevents us from being able to drive him anywhere but the most necessary trips (the vet and groomer). Every time I leave the room, I have to do a mental scan of everything within his reach to make sure that I’ve not left or dropped anything that could be a choking or toxicity hazard, since Humphrey is certain to find and eat that object within seconds. I have to meticulously stare at the ground, watching out for animal faeces or other dangerous objects when I take him for even a short doddle up the road for his toilet breaks (since our own backyard has literally been quarantined due to a parasitic infection in the grass). We’ve had to cancel birthday celebrations and limit guests coming to our home. We don’t know if we’ll be able to host Thanksgiving this year (an American tradition I’ve continued since moving to England 12 years ago) or even put up our Christmas tree for fear of him trying to eat it. 

Basically, our life feels like it’s on hold. And my mental health has deteriorated greatly because of it.

You tell me, if you were living in such a state of hyper-vigilance and isolation, that you wouldn’t throw every ounce of hope into anything that gives you a chance at normalcy again. Tell me you wouldn’t let your heart swell as you’re faced with even the possibility that a living creature who you love so much will have an end to their suffering.

Tell me that my hope was foolish, reckless, setting myself up for despair. Go on, I dare you.

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I have found that when we’re in times of deep suffering, grief, loneliness, you name it, the Christians around us (and we can probably include ourselves in this if we’re honest) have this need to give some sort of theological band-aid in an attempt to comfort.

For me, the story I’ve been given a lot over my life is that I need to surrender more, lay down my idols, and press deeper into finding my “all” in God. To acknowledge that His version of my good is different than my version of my good, and to learn peace by desiring nothing but Him.

This reasoning is altogether Biblical. I have zero theological issues with it. It’s a narrative about how our times of struggle and suffering can often be, ultimately, for our good as God uses them to teach us how to surrender all of our little idols in favour of wholly, completely desiring Him.

Please hear me again when I say again that I have no theological issue with this. Like, none. Scripture shows us so many occasions in which things do not work out for “good” as defined by a human standard, but ultimately, a deeper, eternal “good” is accomplished because God does not yield His will to anything but perfect goodness. I have experienced this kind of redemption in my own life.

But here’s where I take up issue with how this narrative has been applied to me over the years: I do not believe that seeking happiness in honest, wholesome, good things is the same as making those things idols; and I do not believe that grieving the brokenness of those things is somehow an indication that I don’t desire God above all else.

Now I am certain that people are not implying that idolisation is akin to simply looking for happiness in this world, but the problem is that when you don’t know the full motivation in someone’s heart, such a message can be implied whether the speaker intended it or not. Are there people who are suffering because they have placed their own success, finances, vanity, security, comfort, or relationships on a pedestal that far outweighs their pursuit of Christ? Absolutely. But far too often, we assume that this is every Christian’s story even when we don’t actually know what’s taking place in their heart. What’s more, we can inadvertently turn someone’s grief into a moral compass which indicates how much or how little they’ve “surrendered to Christ.” This feels like a broken measuring stick to me.

When you are isolated, sick, grieving, impoverished, hungry, or heartbroken, it does not inherently mean that you have forgotten that your eternal hope, joy, salvation, and fulfilment are in Jesus. It just means that you live in a body that was designed to be in community, to be well, to be whole, to be sheltered, to metabolise food¹, to love and be loved… and for a long list of reasons, those material needs aren’t being materially met because this world is broken.

When my wedding fell apart in the heartbreaking year of 2020, I had a few well-meaning friends respond to my grief by telling me that maybe this was God’s way of removing the “idol” of a wedding from me. On the surface, that sounds like a mercy and a grace (and when something truly is an idol, its painful removal is a mercy and a grace). But I knew in my heart of hearts that the deep hope I’d placed in having a beautiful wedding was not a form of idolisation. A wedding, for me, was never just a big party. It was never simply an opportunity to don a white dress and have all eyes on me. It wasn’t just a cultural ritual. The entire meaning of a wedding, for me, was an act of worship, a declaration of faith, a moment of fighting for “on Earth as it is in Heaven” in an embodied, physical sense. You can read the words from my inaugural post on The Battle Cry, where I explain my heart behind it:

The point was that for us, our wedding day was always meant to be a declaration of what we believed in. We believed in each other, yes – but we also believed in a God who was good, in a life that was worth celebration, in the people who rallied around us and helped us get to a day that was worth all our dancing and singing. It was about more than just being married: it was an act of worship – a communion with our people, solemnized by vows declaring that love is worth the risk in every part of life… because love was worth the risk for Jesus.

When a loving friend tried to imply that my desire to embody the joy of a life found in God’s love – the joy of a wedding feast (a visual often used in Scripture itself) – was somehow an idol, I took the stance that Job took with his friends: I boldly rejected their attempt to tell me my own story. I knew my own mind. I knew my heart’s first love was in Christ alone, and I knew that the life I was trying to build flowed from a desire to embody my love of him in the material world.

I believe the same to be true of how my loneliness mirrors my desire to be in the community of Christ-followers who live back in my old town – the community whose honest, humble quest for discipleship actually healed me from past church abuse. I believe it to be true of my desire to be healed from my auto-immune disease so that I might have a body strong and healthy enough to one day bear children and teach them about their Saviour. And I believe it to be true of my simple, honest longing for a thriving life with my innocent little dog – for him to no longer suffer, for our family to enjoy walks together and live a simple, quiet life.

I will wholeheartedly refute any implication that hoping for a simple, quiet life is somehow a form of idolisation.² Paul himself encourages us to pursue a simple, quiet life as Christians. Hoping for simple happiness is not the same thing as idolising it. And when someone is grieving some form of brokenness in this world, it is not always helpful to imply that their grief is merely an invitation to “surrender.” When we’re told, as a default, to simply “surrender” in the middle of our suffering, it feels like a fool’s errand because the concept of “surrender” can be vague and elusive in these Christian dialogues.

What, exactly, am I meant to surrender? The desire to have a wedding which screams the message of joy and hope and delight in Jesus to my friends and family? The desire to have a body that isn’t crumbling in pain? The desire to have a dog who isn’t sick? I know that these things are not necessarily rooted in eternity, but I also don’t think that God sees my desire for them as some sort of weakness, defect, or sin issue.

And on a more practical note, I beg the question: how, exactly, am I meant to obtain a state of what others would class as “surrender”? Do I pray more? Spend more time in my Bible than my daily practice already employs?

These questions are meant to be somewhat sarcastic. What I’m getting at here is that when we reduce someone’s pain to a simple status of “not enough surrender,” we inherently trigger the implication that there must be some other formula we haven’t quite cracked yet that will lead to “now you’ve surrendered enough.”

Eastern religions teach this message. One of the first mantras of Buddhism is the statement that “suffering is caused by desire,” followed closely by the next lesson that one must “cease to desire and therefore cease to suffer.”

Friends, this feels like nihilism cloaked in religious language to me. There is a subtle undertone that desiring anything of life is a fruitless, meaningless task, and therefore the only way to escape suffering is to direct all of our mental efforts on finding an internal state where we are satisfied by Christ alone, without actually explaining what that means.

It is precisely BECAUSE of Christ that I desire meaning, wholeness, and joy in this world. Because despite looking down and seeing a creation which sinfully harmed itself and betrayed Him (even whilst being made in His own image), God saw something in humanity worth saving, even to the point of death on a cross. Did He not die so that we might be made whole? Why then, when we grieve a lack of wholeness, are we told that this grief is proof that we haven’t surrendered?

This is where nuance comes in – we have to ask ourselves what a Christian definition of “wholeness” is.³ I truly believe that every well-meaning person who tells me that I will only find peace when I “surrender all my desires to God” is onto something in one sense. They are playing at the fringes of what I *think* wholeness looks like. Corrie Ten Boom is probably one of the best examples demonstrating the pursuit of wholeness, of peace, of “surrender.” Having endured what is arguably the most egregious form of human suffering during the Holocaust, she still penned statements like this:

It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. Will You carry this too, Lord Jesus? But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”

This stunning woman did not deem that her suffering was due to a lack of surrender – rather, her suffering pushed her to know Jesus more. This is where the inherent values of our present, physical world collide with the values of the eternal, spiritual world. As a Christian, I believe that both worlds hold equal value. If they didn’t, then Christ would not have taken on the form of flesh when he embarked on the task of redeeming us, of healing us, of experiencing suffering alongside us.

The material world matters, and our desire to see it reflect Heavenly wholeness is not in vain. So when someone tells me that I am grieving in part because I haven’t “surrendered” to the reality that Christ alone should be my “all,” I believe (or at least, I hope) that what they mean is that for as long as we rightfully grieve this broken world, we need to channel that grief into a mission to know Jesus better. Christ’s grief stemmed from an understanding of this world’s brokenness that stretches across all time and space. He held his grief in his body as he offered it up for capital torture. He of all beings is supremely aware of just how broken this world is. He was entirely surrendered to his Heavenly Father to the point of death on a cross, and still, he grieved. The more I have realised that Jesus shares in my sufferings, the more I have felt deeply loved, deeply known, deeply in love with the God who made me. And this sounds like surrender to me. 

So with that in mind, there is sanctification to be found in suffering. There is an invitation to surrender to Him in our grief. But I refuse to believe that it’s some hidden spiritual formula that we must crack. When we suggest that our grief in this life is due to a lack of surrender, I’m going to be so bold as to say that we are idolising the journey to uncover complex, mysterious, hidden spiritual revelations instead of trusting that God quite often guides us in simple, practical, straightforward ways. Because if you’re sent on a wild goose chase to figure out what “surrender” looks like or even HOW to “surrender enough,” there’s this undertone of ambiguity which can quickly dovetail into a view of God as some devious deity who is hiding the path to freedom from you until you’ve searched “hard enough,” until you’ve “surrendered to Him enough,” until you no longer experience the acuteness of grief. 

We ARE invited to surrender. We ARE being sanctified in our suffering. And those spiritual truths are not in conflict with the physical world as often as Christian discourse would have us believe. What I mean, in simple terms, is that God does not hide the path of freedom from us. Often, we’re the ones who overcomplicate things, not Him. We do this by assuming that grieving the brokenness of the material world is somehow a sign that we haven’t surrendered enough of our lives to Him.

No, friends, the more I surrender, the more I grieve, and the more Jesus finds me. This is the sanctification.

I KNOW that my life is nothing, that I am nothing, without Jesus. My hope is in him alone. My work is dedicated to writing about him. My mission is to love him and know him better. I find him sitting with me in my suffering, and I am in love with him all the more.

And I STILL feel lonely and miss my hometown. I STILL long for things which my current life cannot offer me. I STILL sobbed yesterday when I realised that this procedure my dog endured on Friday has not resulted in any changes to his illness.

We were told that we’d begin to see almost immediate changes in him if the procedure worked. So far, anyway, it hasn’t.

Was my hope in vain? Was I putting my “hope” in the wrong thing by desiring a life where my dog isn’t sick? Is this somehow proof that I haven’t surrendered to Christ enough, haven’t found my hope in him?

You may hold fast to whatever belief makes sense to you, but I firmly believe that the answer to all of those questions is “no.” I hope for a better life, a better world, not merely for its own sake but because I believe that “His Kingdom come” looks like an end to suffering for the vulnerable, an end to sickness and poverty and oppression and evil in every nook and cranny of life. I surrender EVERY hope to a God who I believe cares not just THAT I am grieving but WHY I am grieving. Because this broken world was never what He intended, either.

Even so, I know that at the heart of all of these well-meaning messages of surrender there is an attempt to encourage those of us who grieve to find peace in the here and now, amidst the suffering, by holding on to the promise of eternity. And again, rather than turning this idea into some sort of spiritually wild goose chase, I believe we can look to God and simply ask Him to help us find that peace, to work out that peace within us through His Spirit, rather than to assume that there’s still some new formula we haven’t cracked.

I think that this, perhaps, is the Christian definition of “wholeness” we were working so hard to define – the ability to hold two truths at once: “I am suffering, and God is good.” This is different than imposing the idea of “surrender” on a grieving person, implying that their natural response to this broken world is proof that they haven’t yet embarked on a deep enough journey of spiritual enlightenment.

And like everything else, God kindly gives us a simple, clear road map to finding the wholeness our spirit craves. He doesn’t elude our search for Him; He doesn’t try to trick us. What I mean is that the path to peace, freedom, and holding the tension of grief and surrender is entirely found in embodying The Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name – above all, let me recognise that you, my God, are holy, King of Kings, enthroned forever and ever, amen.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven – let me settle for nothing less than a desire to seek and be part of that mission to bring the wholeness, righteousness, and goodness of YOUR Kingdom here to Earth, right now, spiritually and physically.

Give us this day our daily bread – and even now, Lord, as I hold the hope and desire for your Kingdom to come here on Earth, I look to you to sustain me as I live the very real existence of a world that is broken, that has not yet embodied your Kingdom in all its fullness; give me the present, here-and-now grace to seek you for my endurance, to remember you in my hope, even as I grieve what currently is not-yet-whole; let me find common grace, gratitude, and joy in my present day, in each tiny, fleeting moment of my dog asleep next to me or my husband laughing, which mirrors a shred of the beauty you intend for eternity.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us – let me live, Lord, with a heart that finds freedom as I repent of my own brokenness and forgive the brokenness of others.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil – let me find freedom in seeking righteousness like that of your Son; wherever I DO need to surrender, show me plainly, for you alone, God, can convict me and lead me away from my sinful behaviours so that I might be made whole.

Maybe it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

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The day after Humphrey’s procedure, we drove back to our hometown to visit friends while he rested at home. The sun was shining, and the overwhelming sense of belonging and safety wrapped around us as we drove past the beautiful field where God gave us our redemption wedding 3 years after Covid. It was a wedding that sung all the glorious songs of hope and love and goodness that I’d prayed our wedding would sing – all the more so for the fact that it was a wedding redeemed from heartache.

That field will forever remind me that God cares about my desires – that my grief is not a sign that I am inclined to be broken, but rather that I am inclined to be whole.

I hold onto that reminder now, days after Humphrey’s procedure, realising that we have seen no lasting signs that it has worked.

My body, my soul – which heaved sobs last night as I looked into my future and saw a potential of 10 years with a sick dog – has done nothing BUT surrender. I wake up each morning acutely aware that without the common grace of the Almighty, I cannot get through my day; without the knowledge of His love, I would lose hope that this world is worth my time; without the promise of His Kingdom, I would think that everything is meaningless. I pray for my daily bread, and I also pray for His Kingdom to come RIGHT NOW. I pray to find peace even as I anticipate more pain, and grieve it. I choose to hope for another redemption story after all these months, knowing still that it might not come.

I look to the Holy Spirit to work these things out on my behalf rather than assume I haven’t “cracked the code of surrender.” I rest in the easy, practical love of my God and accept the kinship of suffering with my Saviour. I pray for the grace to endure and the mercy to heal. I live in the tension of “right now” and “some day.”

Friends, maybe instead of telling grieving Christians to “surrender,” simply remind them that their grief is proof that eternity is real, that Jesus is suffering alongside them, that they are not alone, that the Holy Spirit is working on their behalf, and they are allowed to be complex creations who both grieve and hope all at once. 

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. So for the joy set before us, the joy worthy of our hope, we, too can endure.

All my love,

P.S. Just a reminder that if you enjoyed this post, hitting that little “heart” button is a simple, millisecond way to support my work and help it reach more people. I’m so glad you’re here. Bless you, friends.

1. Before anyone makes the argument that we are encouraged to fast in order to specifically meditate on the fact that God is our only true sustenance, I will remind you that seasons of fasting are meant to be just that: seasons. God does not ask us to be eternally hungry to prove a point that He is our Bread of Life. In fact, I’ll gladly point you to a moment in Scripture where, in response to Elijah’s despair, God lovingly offered him a snack.

2. This entire idea is rooted in the notion that our fleshly instincts are inherently sinful and our spirits are inherently longing for righteousness. It’s a weird twist on Saint Paul’s letters, and the idea is more closely rooted in gnosticism than it is Christianity. Christianity is both a spiritual and physical pursuit. We engage with and embody His Kingdom in the natural as well as in the spiritual. This is a theology to which I hold strongly, and most orthodox denominations, when studied, do as well.

3. I always default to a definition of wholeness that encompasses both all of the spiritual mysteries which we have yet to understand AND the physical, embodied wholeness that is described in Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”