Every time you choose to hand something over instead of clutching it tighter, you are moving in the right direction. That is enough. That is more than enough.
Sweet friend, I want to start today by asking you something that I hope lands gently — because I am asking it with so much love and zero judgment.
How many times have you handed something over to God and then taken it right back?
Go ahead. Think about it honestly. That worry about your finances that you prayed over on Monday and were anxious about again by Tuesday morning. That relationship situation you laid at God’s feet during your quiet time and picked back up before you even finished your coffee. That fear about the future that you surrendered in prayer and then spent the next three hours thinking about anyway.
If you are anything like me — and I have a feeling you might be — the answer is more times than you can count.
And for a long time, sweet friend, that made me feel like something was wrong with me. Like my faith was defective somehow. Like everybody else had figured out this surrendering-to-God thing and I was the only one still white-knuckling my worries while simultaneously trying to appear peaceful and trusting on the outside.
Maybe you know that feeling too.
Today I want to talk about that. Honestly and openly and with as much grace as I possibly can. Because I think there is a lie a lot of us have been believing about what it actually means to trust God — and I think that lie has been making us feel guilty and ashamed about something that is actually one of the most normal, most human parts of the faith journey.
The Lie We Believed About Trust
Here is the lie. See if it sounds familiar.
Trusting God means reaching a place where you no longer struggle with worry, doubt, or fear. Once you have enough faith — once you have prayed enough, studied enough, grown enough — you will arrive at a permanent state of peace and surrender where anxiety no longer has any real power over you. Until you get there you are not trusting God the way you are supposed to.
I believed that lie for years. Completely and wholeheartedly.
I thought trust was a destination. A specific, identifiable place on the faith journey where you finally had it all figured out. Where the worrying stopped and the peace was constant and you just knew — deep in your bones, unshakeably — that God had it all under control and you never had to wrestle with giving it back to Him again.
And because I kept struggling. Because I kept taking things back. Because I kept waking up at 3 AM with the same fears I had prayed over a hundred times — I assumed I just wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t faithful enough. Wasn’t spiritually mature enough. Wasn’t good enough at this whole trusting God thing.
And that assumption was exhausting and discouraging and — I want to say this as clearly as I can — completely untrue.
What Trust Actually Looks Like
Here is the truth that changed everything for me. And I hope it does the same for you today.
Trusting God is not a destination. It is a direction.
Read that one more time. Let it really settle.
It is not a place you arrive at and then permanently stay. It is not a level of faith you achieve where struggle disappears and peace is automatic. It is a direction. A repeated, daily, sometimes moment-by-moment choice to keep turning toward God instead of away from Him. To keep opening your hands instead of clenching them. To keep moving toward surrender even when every anxious instinct in your human heart is pulling you the other direction.
And here is the most freeing, most grace-filled part of that truth:
Every single time you choose the direction of trust — even imperfectly, even for the hundredth time today — you are moving in the right direction.
That is not failure. That is faith.
Real faith. Honest faith. The kind of faith that says “Lord, I know I just picked this back up again. Here it is. I’m trying. Please help me.” The kind of faith that gets back up after it stumbles. The kind of faith that keeps choosing the direction of surrender even when the destination feels impossibly far away.
That faith — imperfect and persistent and try-again faith — is exactly what God is looking for. Not perfection. Not arrival. Just direction.
The People in the Bible Who Kept Taking It Back
I want to spend a few minutes in Scripture today because I think this truth is woven all through the Bible in ways we sometimes miss.
Think about the disciples. These were men who walked with Jesus in person. They heard Him teach with their own ears, watched Him perform miracles with their own eyes, felt His presence with their own bodies. And yet — they worried. They doubted. They were afraid in the storm even though Jesus was literally in the boat with them. They asked the same questions over and over again. They took things back from God constantly.
And Jesus never once looked at them with exasperation and said “when are you going to get this right?” He was patient with them. Endlessly, graciously, perfectly patient. Even with Peter who denied Him three times — the very thing he had promised with all the passion and confidence in the world that he would never do.
Think about David — the man after God’s own heart. The Psalms are full of David swinging between trust and fear, praise and despair, surrender and anxiety. In one psalm he is worshipping with everything he has. In the next he is crying out “Where are You, God? Have You forgotten me?” Back and forth, back and forth, throughout his entire life.
And God called him a man after His own heart. Not because David always got it right. But because David always came back. Always turned back in the right direction. Always brought his honest heart to God — the doubts and the fears and the failures right alongside the praise and the trust and the faith.
That is what God is looking for in us too, sweet friend. Not perfect arrival. Just faithful direction. 🌸
Why We Keep Taking It Back
Now I want to talk about something that I think is really important — and that is the why behind why we keep picking our worries back up after we have given them to God.
Because understanding the why doesn’t excuse it — but it does help us have more grace with ourselves. And it points us toward what actually helps.
We take it back because worry feels like control.
When we are anxious about something we can not control, the act of worrying about it creates the illusion that we are doing something. That we are engaged. That we are preparing. Our brains are wired to try to solve problems — and when a problem can not be solved, worry steps in as a substitute for action. It does not actually help anything. But it feels like it might.
We take it back because trust feels vulnerable.
Genuinely surrendering something to God means accepting that the outcome might not be what we want. It means letting go of control over something we deeply care about. And that is terrifying. So we hold on. Not because we don’t believe God is capable — but because trust requires a vulnerability that our hearts sometimes struggle to sustain.
We take it back because the anxiety returns before the answer does.
We give something to God in a moment of genuine surrender — and then the feeling of peace doesn’t last forever, because feelings never do. The situation is still unresolved. The fear is still real. And in the absence of the answer, the anxiety rushes back in to fill the space. And we mistake the return of the feeling for a failure of our faith.
But sweet friend — the return of anxiety is not evidence that your surrender wasn’t real. It is evidence that you are human. And it is simply an invitation to surrender again. And again. And again if needed.
The Practice of Persistent Surrender
I want to introduce you to a phrase today that has genuinely transformed the way I think about trusting God.
Persistent surrender.
Not perfect surrender. Not one-time surrender. Persistent surrender. The kind that keeps coming back. The kind that says “I gave this to You yesterday and here I am again today with the same thing because I picked it back up — but I am choosing to give it back.”
That is not weakness. That is one of the most powerful spiritual practices there is.
Think about it this way. Physical exercise works not because you go to the gym once and arrive at fitness — but because you keep showing up. Every time you show up, even when you don’t feel like it, even when you are sore from last time, even when the progress feels slow — you are building something. You are getting stronger in ways you can not always see in the moment.
Trust works the same way, sweet friend.
Every time you choose to surrender instead of clutch — even if you surrendered yesterday and are surrendering the exact same thing again today — you are building something. You are strengthening the muscle of faith. You are deepening the groove of trust in your heart so that over time, slowly and imperfectly and by the grace of God, it becomes a little more natural. A little more instinctive. A little more like the direction your heart automatically turns when things get hard.
You will not arrive at a place where you never struggle again. But you will find, over time, that the struggle is shorter. That the return to trust is faster. That the peace comes back a little more quickly each time.
That is growth. That is faith. That is the direction. 💜
What God Thinks Every Time You Come Back
I want to paint a picture for you today — and I want you to really let it sink in because I think it might be one of the most important things you read all week.
Imagine you have a child — or a dear friend, if you don’t have children — who is going through something really hard. And they keep coming to you with it. Over and over again. They tell you about it and you comfort them and they seem okay — and then the next day they are back again with the same worry, the same fear, the same need for reassurance.
Would you be frustrated with them? Would you look at them and say “I already addressed this, I’m not doing it again”?
Of course not. If you love them, every single time they come to you, you would open your arms and let them in. You would be glad they came to you instead of suffering alone. You would comfort them as many times as they needed. Because that is what love does.
Sweet friend — God’s love is infinitely, immeasurably greater than even the best human love we have ever known or offered.
Every single time you come back to Him with the same worry, the same fear, the same burden you picked back up again — He is not rolling His eyes. He is not sighing with disappointment. He is not keeping a tally of how many times this makes.
He is opening His arms. Again. With the same grace and the same love and the same “I am so glad you came back” that He had the very first time.
Because that is who He is. That is what He does. That is the love that sent Jesus to the cross — and it does not run out and it does not give up and it does not diminish no matter how many times you need to come back to it. 💜
A New Way to Think About Your Faith Journey
I want to leave you with a picture today that I hope stays with you for a long time.
Stop thinking about your faith journey as a road that leads to a destination called Trust. Where the goal is to arrive and stay and never struggle again.
Start thinking about it as a compass pointing in a direction called God.
A compass does not care how many times you have gone off course. It does not punish you for wandering. It does not give up and stop pointing after you have ignored it too many times. Every single time you look at it — whether it is the first time or the ten thousandth time — it points you back in the right direction. Faithfully. Consistently. Without judgment.
That is what this faith journey is, sweet friend. Not a road to a destination. A compass pointing a direction.
And every time you look at it — every time you choose to turn back toward God, to open your hands, to surrender the thing you were clutching, to try again — you are moving in the right direction.
That is enough. It has always been enough. It will always be enough. 🌸
With so much love, Marilyn Finding Life’s Magic
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