The Paradox of Control and Surrender

The Paradox That Holds Us

It’s strange how hard it is to rest when your entire life depends on being responsible.

Even rest can feel like work when you’re wired to keep moving. I didn’t understand why something as simple as lunch could feel like a burden. But for someone who has always been driven by responsibility, maybe even a reluctant leader, it makes sense. Rest feels unfamiliar when control has become your language of safety.

That morning, I met a pastor for an inner healing session. It was meant to be simple, just a quiet prayer. He invited the Holy Spirit to speak, and that’s when an old memory resurfaced. I saw my parents fighting over money. My father wanted to close the shop early for safety. My mother insisted on staying open to be diligent. They argued so hard that they tore the money in half.

That sound, the tearing of paper, still echoes in my memory. It wasn’t just the sound of money breaking. It was the sound of love clashing with fear. Something split inside me that day, long before I ever understood what it meant to lead.

I realised I had been raised not just as a son, but as the legacy holder, the only son of the eldest son. In our family, lineage is responsibility. Legacy isn’t optional. It’s duty. I was expected to hold things together, to carry the torch forward, to be the one who could not fail. Everyone else could live freely; I had to preserve.

And so, responsibility became my inheritance.

Even science supports what I later learned spiritually. The human brain never truly rests. Our default-mode network stays almost 80 percent active even when we sleep. That means stillness isn’t inactivity. Stillness is the redirection of energy back to its source.

I thought rest was the absence of doing. But real rest is the presence of being.

When Responsibility Becomes the Cage

As a boy, I used to argue with my parents that it wasn’t fair. “I didn’t choose to be the eldest son,” I said. But identity is not a choice. You can disown your parents, but you can’t erase your origin. You can change your name, your career, even your body, but not your beginnings.

And that same truth carries into marriage. I’ve seen so many couples stay together on paper yet drift apart in soul. They share a home, a routine, and even children, but not intimacy. Research from the Gottman Institute shows that 69 percent of marital conflicts are never fully resolved. What separates the healthy marriages from the broken ones isn’t how much they fix. It’s how deeply they stay connected while things remain imperfect.

That realisation hit me hard. Because the same pattern that shaped my family shaped me. I became someone who equated worth with control. The same sense of responsibility that made me reliable also made me restless.

Even when I go cycling, I can’t help myself. I check my lights, adjust my brake, imagine every possible risk: accident, paralysis, even death. I calculate the odds, plan my escape routes, record my rides. I am not reckless; I am calculated.

There’s a difference between being a risk-taker and being a gambler. I don’t gamble. I calculate. I never invest in something without reason. Even my risks are calculated. It gives me a sense of control and safety.

But it dawned on me that my carefulness had become my cage. The prefrontal cortex runs a constant risk simulator, predicting threats before they happen. That’s great for survival, but it also means peace becomes rare. We keep trying to protect ourselves from what hasn’t even happened.

That’s how control becomes addiction.

Beneath all my management and discipline, something else was managing me. Beneath my control, something else was controlling me.

And when I finally stopped calculating, God began revealing.

The Vessel and the Well

During that prayer, two images appeared. The first was of Jesus holding my mother, comforting her like a child. The second was of a great vessel filled from above with liquid gold. It kept overflowing, but my attention was fixed on where the gold was going. The pastor said softly, “Your eyes should be on the source.”

That sentence became a revelation.

For years, I had been staring at outcomes, trying to manage overflow, my businesses, my family, my teams. But I’d forgotten to look up.

Then the pastor said, “Be still and know that He is God.”

At first, it sounded simple. Later, it became the centre of everything.

“Be still” appears 364 times in Scripture, almost one for every day of the year. It’s as if God built a rhythm into time itself, knowing we would forget.

The more I tried to control, the more control owned me. The paradox of control is this: the tighter your grip, the smaller your world becomes.

Then came another image that completed the lesson. “Marriage,” he said, “is like a well.” When your well is full, what you draw out is clean water. When it’s dry, you start pulling up dirt. And that dirt doesn’t just affect you; it affects everyone who drinks from it.

That line pierced me. A dry soul contaminates even its best intentions.

The vision of gold reminded me of 1 Peter 1:7: “Your faith, tested by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honour.” Gold is divine refinement. And the voice in my heart said, “Let Me pour. Stop patching the leaks.”

I realised that my tendency to fix leaks was robbing me of faith.

Science agrees with this truth in its own way. Chronic stress literally shrinks the hippocampus, the part of the brain that manages learning and memory. But prayer, reflection, and stillness reverse the damage. When we slow down, our bodies begin to heal, our brains start to grow again, our thoughts reorganise into peace.

Even the heart tells the same story. It contains about 40,000 neurons that communicate emotion to the brain before logic ever does. No wonder Scripture says, Guard your heart. It’s not just spiritual counsel; it’s biological truth.

“Stillness is the strategy of the soul.”

When I finally looked up, I saw that my need for control was a kind of unbelief. I trusted my systems more than my Source.

Learning to Let Go Without Losing Purpose

Every gift has a cost: responsibility, productivity, even convenience.

I used to think surrender meant doing nothing. But I learned that “be still” is not passive. It’s active awareness. It’s learning to see beyond your own effort and to remember who holds the outcome.

A 2022 MIT study found that leaders who practise structured stillness, reflection, prayer, or silence, make 80 percent better long-term decisions. Clarity replaces reaction. Stillness multiplies impact.

Even biologically, surrender rewires us. When you let go, your body releases dopamine and oxytocin. They’re not reward chemicals here; they’re bonding chemicals. The body’s way of saying, You’re safe now.

That’s what surrender is, safety disguised as trust.

Maybe that’s why Jesus slept through the storm while His disciples panicked. Mark 4:38 records not indifference but authority. True power rests in stillness, not in control.

Knowing that He is God is not a call to stop moving. It’s a call to stop striving.

For builders, parents, and leaders alike, that’s the hardest discipline: to rest while the work continues.

I experienced it again recently in a leadership meeting. Tension was building. My instinct was to step in, fix, and control. Instead, I paused. Breathed. Looked up. Within minutes, the team found the solution themselves. I didn’t have to dominate the moment. I just had to make space for it.

It reminded me that leadership doesn’t always need volume. Sometimes it needs stillness.

Pause. Breathe. Look Up.

That became my three-step habit of surrender.

I used to think leadership was about holding everything together. Now I see that sometimes, leadership begins when you let go.

Even science mirrors this truth. When the brain shifts from overactivity to stillness, the alpha waves rise, stress lowers, and creativity increases. The same pattern happens in prayer. Stillness unlocks insight.

When we surrender, we don’t stop leading. We lead from a deeper centre.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

The more I tried to stay in control, the more I became enslaved to control.

The more I fought to lead, the less room I gave God to lead through me.

True strength is not the ability to hold on. It is the courage to be still.

The day that began as a battlefield of duty ends as rest.

The day that began with noise ends in silence.

And in that silence, everything begins again.