371 Surrender Your Story

I think what many of us have to, and health, when we get into health situations, our health will humble us.

That's one thing I will say after 25 years of practicing medicine.

It is the great humbler for all of us.

I think most of us have this feeling that we have some type of control, although we never ever had control.

But I think most of us have this sense of control in our life and in our stories.

But when we are confronted with our health, especially in the situation where an aneurysm, particularly in the situation you described, not only is it something that's not talked about often, It's not like a doctor told you had high blood pressure.

That doesn't really provoke the same type of surrender as when you tell somebody you have an aneurysm and you could have a stroke and this could happen during the surgery.

It's a different kind of surrender when the stakes feel different.

So I'm curious when you were in this process.

So I love how you describe kind of the surrender moment, because I feel like that is that is when we really shift our relationship with God.

It really goes to another level of understanding of who he is and how he shows up in our day to day lives, the highs, the lows and everything in between.

How did that experience really teach you about releasing the need to control the stories in general?

It taught me that I can't control.

I think I even tried to apply that to relationships where we're trying to fix people or instead of just letting go and praying for them.

And supporting, yes, encouraging, yes, but not, I stopped being the fixer.

And it all of a sudden, I felt like it freed me up so much to live.

I don't know if that's really answering your question, but.

No, that's exactly where I was leading because I think too often we look at certain parts of our lives and we say, I'll give God this part, but I'm going to keep this part because we like control.

We're hotwired for control.

So when you get to that place where you really are surrendering it all to Jesus, we sing the songs, right? All to Jesus, I surrender, but we don't really do it.

But when you get to the point that your heart really has hit that level of release, there is a great piece that comes with that.

And I love how that experience really filtered over into your writing journey.

Because as you mentioned, you were writing the book that's now out titled Where the Water Meets the Sky.

This is a novel that you were writing.

And in this process of going through this surrender journey in the hospital, you decided you needed to rewrite the book.