There is something almost embarrassing about realizing that the very thing you spent your entire life building to protect yourself has become the thing keeping you from resting, growing, and becoming that better version of yourself. For 36 years, it seems I have been building a fortress. Brick by brick, I have learned to anticipate what could go wrong. I have learned to read the room before entering it. I have learned to prepare for disappointment before it finds me. I have learned to hold things together, make a plan, find a solution, and keep moving. Why? Because sometimes there wasn't anyone else coming to do it for me. Control became more than a habit; it became my love language. An armor. A promise made. And perhaps without ever saying it out loud, I created a habit in which I could stay one step ahead, leaving no space for anything (or anyone) to catch me off guard again. If I could prepare enough, love enough, work enough, think enough, pray enough, carry enough, I could create a life where I didn’t have to experience hurt and disappointment ever again. It worked too, for a while.
It helped me survive seasons I didn't know how to navigate. It taught me resourcefulness when I needed it, discernment when I lacked it, and perseverance when giving up wasn't an option. I will not sit here and pretend that every wall I built was a mistake. Some of those walls were built by a younger version of me who was doing the very best she could with what she had, and she deserves a little tenderness too. The problem is survival has a way of becoming a lifestyle long after the danger has passed, and somewhere along the way, I stopped asking whether I was safe and started believing that safety depended entirely on me, much like everything and everyone else in my life. Safety, to me, depended on my ability to anticipate, manage, and keep everyone else okay. The biggest wall was making the right decisions, saying the right things, and catching the little details before they became big problems. The walls got so high that I could even turn things like rest and surrender into projects I wanted to orchestrate perfectly.
Lately I feel that is where God has been meeting me: right in the middle of all my trying, without the condemnation and list of wrongdoings that I place on myself. Instead, he’s provided me with an invitation, and I’m finding it much harder to accept than I’d expect, because the invitation is to give him the keys to the fortress I’ve built. After all, He sees His daughter and never intended her to spend her entire life guarding these gates.
I think there comes a point when you begin to recognize how many of your decisions are being made by the part of you that is afraid. Fear doesn't always look like panic; sometimes it looks remarkably responsible. Other times it looks like struggling to delegate, because no one else will do it quite the way you would. It can also look like mentally rehearsing conversations before they happen and replaying them long after they have ended. One of the most common ways it looked for me was carrying responsibilities that were never mine to carry because the possibility of something falling apart felt more frightening than the exhaustion of holding it all together. In that place, panic most commonly looked like independence. What I failed to realize was that being capable did not have to mean I had to carry people, situations, and so many other things alone, and now it has been the most uncomfortable lesson for me to learn. I have spent so many years being the one who figures things out, that it feels extremely vulnerable to admit that genuinely, I don’t know what is going to come next.
When you have built an identity around being dependable, it can feel almost irresponsible to loosen your grip. I find myself asking, “What happens if I stop anticipating every problem? What happens if I let someone else help? What happens if I pray about something and then actually leave it in God's hands instead of praying about it, researching it, planning for it, worrying over it, and attempting to control the outcome anyway”? I am trying so desperately to step into the fact that I don't have all the answers, but I am beginning to understand that peace and control are not the same thing. Control tells me I can rest once everything is settled. Peace invites me to rest even when it isn't. Learning this difference has been very hard.
Per usual, I keep coming back to Mother Mary, not because her life was free of uncertainty, but because it wasn't. Her yes to God did not come with a neatly printed itinerary. She was not handed a complete explanation of every sorrow she would endure, every question she would have to sit with, or every moment when loving her son would mean watching Him walk a road she could not walk for him. She was merely given an invitation and, without hesitation, said YES. We often speak of Mary's fiat as though surrender must have felt effortless because she was holy, but I find something deeply human in the mystery of her consent. She was a young woman receiving a calling that would change the course of her life, without being shown every chapter in advance, and her yes had no knowing and no control. I think that is exactly what draws me to her in this season of my life: the quiet strength of a woman who could make room for God's will without first demanding that every uncertainty disappear. She mothered Jesus. Nurtured Jesus and was present with Him, but could not control every road he would walk. When I lean into that, I realize something: neither can I. I can show up for my husband, care for the people who call me friend, and tend to the work that God has blessed me with. I can love my babies with all my heart. Guide them, teach them, pray over them, correct them, and try my best to create a home where they feel the love overflowing from my motherhood.
Unfortunately, the one thing I absolutely cannot do is protect every single one of them from disappointment. I cannot love God while insisting that He show me the entire staircase before I agree to take the next step.
Sometimes surrender is loving deeply without demanding ownership over the outcome, and sometimes it is saying yes while your hands are still trembling, but to me, in this season, it is allowing God to be God, even when every instinct in me wants to take over. What I’m realizing I misunderstood for so many years was that surrendering didn’t mean I had to lose who Gabriela is. I always thought letting it go would render me powerless. Make me careless. A failure to those around me and those whom I loved. If I stopped being the strong one, everything I had worked so hard to build would fall apart. In reality: I know what it is to work for stability. To build a life with intention, to mother through the exhaustion, to begin again, to make beauty from ashes. I am not interested in romanticizing helplessness. I don't believe God is asking me to abandon my responsibilities, ignore my discernment, or stop participating in my own life; I just think He may be asking me to stop confusing responsibility with omnipotence. Gabriela, tend to your garden, but don’t command the weather. Gabriela, do your part, but the outcome is not dependent on you. Gabriela, use your wisdom, but don’t make decisions based on the past. God isn’t asking me to be less of a wife, mother, or woman; He’s asking me to become a woman who can use all of the gifts I have without allowing fear to rule the place that thinks if I loosen my grip it’ll all fall apart.
I am thirty-six years old as of last Monday, and I am learning that I do not have to earn my way into being held. What a strange thing to learn after spending so much of my life holding everyone else. I still hold the keys, and I wish I could tell you that I have handed them over. That every morning I wake with unshakable peace, that I no longer reach for control in uncertainty, that prayer is always my first instinct, but that wouldn’t be the truth; it would be much prettier, but it wouldn’t be real. You see, the truth is that I am still learning to recognize when it’s really anxiety leading and not intuition. When I’m trying to force an answer that’s asking for more time. When I ask God to bless a plan that I’m already sold out on. I still like knowing; I like the reassurance of knowing the outcome. There’s still comfort in believing that if I can just think hard enough, prepare and anticipate enough possibilities, I can spare myself and those I love from pain. That’s what makes this invitation so personal. God isn’t asking me to hand over something I never cared about, but He’s asking me to loosen my grip on something I have depended on for a very long time. The fortress is familiar; I know her hallways, every door that’s locked, every place where I have reinforced the walls after life showed me another reason why I need to be careful, and I know how to live here. The biggest realization is that I’ve mistaken familiarity with freedom for far too long, so I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel my heart at peace, and I have left no room for wonder. Now I’m realizing that God, in all His patience, has been standing at the gate all this time, watching me and waiting for me to understand that He never asked me to build a life in which I would never need Him; He asked me to build a life with Him.
So, yes, at thirty-six, I am not tearing the fortress down in one dramatic afternoon; I am opening one door at a time. Letting someone else carry something. Leaving questions unanswered until I can get to them. Praying without attaching a set of instructions for the creator of the universe. I am free-falling and trusting that the God who met me in the seasons when I had to be strong is also the God who can meet me in the seasons when I am tired of being strong. Maybe eventually, I will learn to stop keeping the keys clenched sooo tightly in my hand, because I am beginning to believe that the One asking for the keys is not asking me to surrender my safety to the unknown; He is asking me to trust Him with what I cannot know.
And maybe that’s what becoming at 36 looks like. Not being unafraid, or mastering the art of letting go, but allowing myself to feel the fear, recognize the old instinct to want to take control, and choosing to leave room.