Breaking the Cycle: How God Led Me to Surrender
I spent some time the other day reading entries in my journals from 2021 and 2022. The pain, fear, desperation, hurt, confusion, anger, struggle, and constant need to figure things out, take action, and get results are deafening. I wasn’t just obsessed. I was possessed, being driven into desiring the impossible and believing I could do it on my own strength. I was technically seeking God for a breakthrough but constantly holding myself responsible and accountable for everything.
I believed my circumstances held the answers, never realizing transformation had to start from within. I blamed my circumstances for how I felt and had no idea it could be any other way.
On July 25th, 2021, I wrote, “If I didn’t have the financial pressure, I wouldn’t be in so much pain. I would be much more hopeful.”
I thought making it in business was going to solve everything for me. I was oblivious to the enemy’s strongholds, the wrong mindsets and motives, and the fear, pain, shame, and hurt deep in my heart.
Fast-forward a year, and in June 2022, my entries are conversations with God. They’re filled with wrong understandings and doctrines, but I’m desperately seeking Him at this point.
Entry Dated June 10th, 2022
My finances are beyond out of control. I have no safety nets. I rely completely on Your security, grace, protection, safety, love, and goodwill. My situation, as seen in the eyes of the world, makes me want to crawl into the fetal position. You are propping me up–I’m leaning completely on You.
I want to appreciate this season in my life, but I’m struggling. While I know God is all I need, my flesh is desperate for worldly reassurance–money. I’m angry I’m broke, I don’t have sponsors, I’m angry with the state of my life, I’m stuck, and I’m angry that I’m angry.
What process am I going through? What process should I be focusing on? Business process? Faith building? Personal growth?
I can’t help people in the middle of my struggle since I don’ know what it’s about. I don’t know what thoughts and ideas I can trust and follow. I don’t know what’s of me, God, or the enemy.
I ended the entry by asking God to take me out of the financial fire, admitting I was barely hanging on, and describing the natural solution I thought I needed to take to fix things.
The entry highlights I was attached to the world’s opinions, views, and ways and filled with anger. I had only head knowledge of God; I didn’t know Him. I didn’t trust Him. I lacked faith, and my life was not firmly rooted in the Word of God. But I was reaching out to Him. I wanted to know Him. I was doing devotionals and reading the Word.
Many of my entries between July 2021 and June 22 describe how I feel torn inside. The spiritual warfare was extremely intense. I was reading the Word and looking for it to take root in my life, and the enemy was playing on the strongholds and wrong beliefs that were predominant in me.
Entry Dated June 13th, 2022
Warning: This journal entry contains descriptions of suicidal thoughts and self-harm ideation. If you are in a vulnerable state or sensitive to these topics, please consider whether reading further is right for you. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a trusted friend, counselor, or crisis support resource. You are not alone.
It’s June 13th. I’m fed up with the state of my life. The world has plenty of advice for what to do about it. What are the Godly answers? What is YOUR Will?
If I had a gun, I would use it. I believe God has a fabulous plan for my life but I don’t have what it takes to wait on it and get to it. I’m doing the pity party again. I can’t break that pattern, the emotional eating, the pain, the confusion, and the thoughts I’m not good enough for God to use me.
The way to end the endless loop of madness is a gunshot to the head. How long, God, will you keep me in this torture?
If I had a gun, I would use it, and when I got to Heaven, I would tell God, “It’s your fault. You gave me a purpose and left me struggling. I was constantly attacked by the enemy and never got to be me. Never got to be who you created me to be. I sat on a bench, hurting, in misery, and on a rollercoaster. Instead of being productive–I battled attacks. You left me in mediocrity, in misery and pain. It didn’t matter what bold steps I took. You exhausted me. I was beyond broken, begging to serve, begging to fulfill Your plan for my life. I am in my own personal hell–wanting, desiring, and trying to be obedient. Praying to know you more, to be more like Jesus, and coming short.”
It’s more torturous than being prosecuted, jailed, or tortured—you can accept those conditions. My condition is being ignored, wasted, confused, IGNORED, unworthy, IGNORED. There’s no end in sight.
How does one praise when stuck, ignored, and going crazy? I can make my condition worse just to feel something. Food. Emotional eating. Alcohol, sex, drugs–I know better. Holding steady in mediocrity with a dream in my soul and spirit. If I had a gun, I would end it.
I want this vicious loop/cycle to end. Take it in my own hands and turn my back on God’s will–death is a better option. Stay in it, trust God, and keep the cycle maybe forever since I don’t know God’s timing or His Will. End it, God. Put an end to this pain, misery, and (curse word) place you’re keeping me in. End it, Ann. I can’t take this.
I’m going to go buy a gun tomorrow. I’m too tired and exhausted to pull myself back together. I’m done with the rollercoaster.
God, Father, I’m broken.
God Sent One of His Disciples to Pray Over Me
Later that day, I was contacted by a retired Master Gunnery Sergeant (MGuns) whom I had not heard from (outside of Facebook) or seen in over a decade. We had served together on Okinawa. He was in Las Vegas and wanted to meet up. I met up with him that evening. I didn’t share everything I was going through, but some of it, and he prayed over me.
I wrote in my journal on June 14th. I believe MGuns prayer released the hold the enemy had on me. I will not go buy a gun because if I had one, I would use it.
The remainder of my entry for that day was about the work I needed to do and my options for making money. I was resetting the vicious cycle the enemy had me trapped in.
It saddens me that nowhere in the entry do I praise God or give Him thanks for sending me a godly man I trusted and admired to talk to and pray for me in my desperate time of need. I couldn’t recognize His Hand and work in my life. I was way too focused on everything I didn’t have.
I didn’t recognize it then, but I do now—His presence was there, even when I was angry, confused, and felt forsaken. He wasn’t ignoring me. He was protecting me from the enemy attack. He was allowing the situation to bring me to the end of myself, so I would step into the fiery furnace.
I have said this a few times already, and I will continue to beat on that drum. God is not focused on the circumstances of our lives; He’s focused on who we are and are becoming. I couldn’t see how much needed to be transformed about who I was.
Obsessed with the Breakthrough In Business
The way I was looking for God to move in my life at that time was for Him to give me a big breakthrough in my business. That’s why God used the business and my entrepreneurial desires to get me into the fiery furnace. For 18 months, my journal entries were filled with my obsession over what I believed God was calling me to do—an obsession that consumed me. I was fixated on trying to force a breakthrough, constantly analyzing what I needed to do next, convinced that if I just figured out the right formula, everything would fall into place.
I wanted success, stability, and financial security. I wanted proof that I was on the right path. And I thought that was the breakthrough I needed—one that would finally end my suffering and validate my faith. But in reality, my focus was misplaced. I was seeking an outcome rather than seeking God Himself.
I was desperate for God to move in a specific way, to bring me the kind of victory I had envisioned. And when that didn’t happen, I felt abandoned, unseen, and stuck in an endless loop of pain.
But God was moving. He was answering me—not in the way I wanted, but in the way I needed.
Entering The Fiery Furnace and The Transformation Phase
The time had come to give Him the go-ahead to do what it took to strip away my self-reliance, my attachments to the world’s measures of success, and the lies and deceptions that had taken root in my mind and poisoned my heart. He needed me to fully submit and surrender.
But surrender isn’t a passive act—it’s an active choice to lay everything at His feet, trust Him in all things, and make Him Lord of my life, relinquishing control and recognizing that His ways are higher than mine.
It would require a renewal of my mind, building up my faith, receiving the Holy Spirit, and undergoing a complete transformation to be the fullness of who I am in Christ. It meant letting go of my demands, expectations, and desperate grip on what I thought my life should look like.
I spent years believing my breakthrough was tied to my ability to figure things out. But I had it backwards—my breakthrough wasn’t something to achieve, it was something to receive. And I could only receive it through surrender.