A Prayer For When I’m Finally Letting Go

God, I give you what I can’t carry anymore.

I give you the worries I can’t quiet. I give you the pain I can’t heal. I give you the questions I can’t answer. I am placing them in your hands. I have tried to hold everything together on my own, and all it has done is break me down. You never asked for me to carry this much, you never wanted me to feel this ache. So I am letting go, God — not out of defeat, but because I trust that you can handle what I can’t.

You see the burdens no one else sees — the silent anxieties, the disappointments I hide, the thoughts that keep me awake even when I say I am fine. You know how tired my heart is from trying to be strong all the time, and your word reminds me that your strength is made perfect in my weakness. I do not have to keep pretending. I do not have to carry it all. I can set it down, I can trust that you will pick it up. 

So I’m giving you the fears that overwhelm me, God. I am giving you the relationships that drain me. I am giving you the situations I can no longer try to control. I am giving you the dreams that didn’t happen the way I had hoped. I’m giving you the ones I am scared to hope for again, too. My hands are tired, but in faith, yours never are.

Help me trust that what I release into your care isn’t lost; it’s finally safe. Teach me that surrender isn’t failure. Show me that it is faith. Let your peace settle where worry lived inside of me. Let your presence quiet the places where pain once spoke the loudest. And when I am tempted to pick everything back up, remind me gently that you already have it. Remind me that I don’t have to carry what was never mine to hold alone.

Here it is, God — all of it. 

I’m giving it to you. 

I am trusting you to lift what I no longer can.