Tending the Soil of a Surrendered Heart

I picked up my phone and instinctively found myself scrolling back through a text thread to read the response—or lack thereof—once again. There it was, just like the last time I’d checked. Delivered . . . but no response. Nothing but a silence that seemed to stretch on and on through this relationship that I just couldn’t quite seem to fix.

Still today, on a holiday nonetheless, I couldn’t help hoping that somehow things might be different. That maybe if I sent just the right message or said exactly the right thing, perhaps all of it could be fixed. Maybe we would celebrate holidays again and take trips and just do life together . . . but the silence said it all.

I never envisioned these kinds of strained relationship dynamics in my own family, especially not in a way I would seem unable to resolve. And yet sometimes—perhaps all the time?—family has a way of looking a bit different than what we’ve been expecting.

Maybe your family has turned out differently than your dreams too. Maybe expectations of expanding your family have been stifled month after month by secondary infertility or undiagnosed health issues. Maybe your hope for certain schooling experiences or family activities have been dampened by the realities of learning disabilities or special needs. Maybe you longed for a certain number of children or one of each gender, but the Lord has seen fit to shape your family otherwise. Or perhaps financial pressures or marital struggles have made family life a whole lot harder than you ever imagined.

As believers, how do we refuse the temptation to simply grow resigned to our set of circumstances and instead sink down deeper into our faith? How do we not just get through our hard times but actually grow through them?

In All Circumstances

I believe the answer is simply this—we surrender to God through the faith-building act of giving him thanks. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 reminds us to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” When we can’t see a way through our crushed hopes, we can praise him in advance, trusting that through it all we really do have a God who is faithful and good. 

When we’re standing in the midst of unexpected struggles with a child’s learning needs, we can choose to thank God for the teachers and other resources he has provided for us. When we’re faced with the frustrations and real-life challenges of raising a growing family, we can praise God for the little glimmers of goodness he’s given along the way. When we’re discouraged or disappointed over the dreams we’ve yet to see come to fruition, we can thank God in faith that he is still doing something beautiful in the unseen spaces of our lives.

Dying to Live

I’m convinced that this is where real growth begins. Jesus himself reminds us of this in John 12:24 when he says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Friend, did you catch that? The only way to bear fruit is to first die. As stark as this sounds, the only way to truly bear the abundant fruit God has planned for our lives is to first face death. The death of our ambitions. The death of our dreams. The death of our unmet expectations and unforeseen hopes. The death of our self. We can lay it all down at his feet and trust that he truly is working something good in the soil of our surrendered hearts.

And yes, at first it may seem like a death. It may feel like the end of all your dreams and the letting go of all your plans and the giving up of every bit of the good life you’ve been imagining. 

But you know what else I can promise you? That very thing that seems like an ending is, in fact, a new beginning. The process of darkness and waiting and dying is the very thing necessary for a seed to fulfill its purpose—to bear fruit. 

So it is with our lives.

And I can’t help but wonder how many of us have seeds within us that must first die, before we can begin growing the good things God has planned for our lives. How many of us need to lay down our own dreams, plans, and expectations for our lives so we can begin living the good life God has prepared for us? 

Friend, I don’t know what hard realities you’re walking through today or exactly the dreams and hopes for your motherhood that seem buried and unseen, but I promise you this—God grows good things in the soil of a surrendered heart. 

As we face these spaces of unforeseen goodness in our own lives, may we choose to give him thanks right in the middle, trusting that God is still who he says he is even in our unexpected life. 

True, my family isn’t the one I envisioned, but day by day, gratitude has opened up my eyes to see something else—God’s goodness is written all over it.