Each year on the Fourth of July, my family and I join hundreds of others to watch our town’s Fourth of July Parade. In gatherings like these across our nation, we celebrate independence, the courage to stand for freedom, and the cost of gaining it.
It speaks to the longing to be strong, self-sufficient, and free.
And yet, those of us who walk the path of healing come to discover a quieter, more paradoxical truth: that real freedom is not forged in independence, but in surrender.
Surrender is a word that can feel like failure. In God’s economy, surrender is not giving up; it is laying down the illusion of control and letting grace in. When we stop trying to mend ourselves with our own strength, something beautiful begins. We are met, not with condemnation, but with kindness. With rest. With release.
At Bethesda Workshops, we have witnessed this holy exchange again and again, with shame giving way to dignity, secrecy to honesty, exhaustion to peace. Men and women arrive burdened, and through surrender, leave lighter, freer, more whole.
So as fireworks fill the sky this week in celebration of our nation’s independence, perhaps take a moment to listen inwardly. Where might God be inviting you to surrender? What part of you longs not for more control, but for release? What if the truest kind of freedom is not found in standing tall, but in kneeling low, arms open?
May this be a season not only of remembrance, but of release. And may you taste the freedom that only grace can give.
