On Sovereignty & Surrender

Many of us carry complicated relationships with authority.

Whether we realize it or not, our experiences with authority — in family, church, culture, or community — shape the way we move through our spiritual lives.

Some of us lean toward sovereignty.
Others toward surrender.
Most of us, at different times, experience both.

When Sovereignty Is Healing

There are seasons when sovereignty is not rebellion — it is survival.

If authority has felt controlling, dishonest, shaming, or unsafe, turning inward can be protective. Necessary. Healing.

Learning to trust your own inner voice.
Clarifying your agency.
Reclaiming your power.

These are not small movements. In spiritual direction, I often sit with women who are doing exactly this work — disentangling themselves from authority that did not feel loving.

Declaring sovereignty can be sacred work.

There are times when discovering your own knowing is life-giving. When stepping out from under external authority is the only way to hear yourself clearly.

Sovereignty, in these moments, is strength.

When Sovereignty Begins to Feel Heavy

And sometimes, something shifts.

Not because sovereignty was wrong.
Not because surrender is more evolved.
But because carrying full authorship can begin to feel like too much.

When all authority lives inside of us, all responsibility can begin to live there too.

Every decision.
Every interpretation.
Every next step.

The pressure to read the signs correctly.
To intuit the right path.
To anticipate what is coming.
To hold what cannot be controlled.

What once felt empowering can begin to feel isolating.

For some, this is the moment when surrender — once unthinkable — begins to feel less like submission and more like relief.

Rethinking Surrender

Surrender has been misunderstood in many spiritual spaces.

For those who have been harmed by coercive authority, surrendering to a higher power can sound like shrinking. Like erasure. Like returning to something unsafe.

But surrender, in its healthiest form, is not about giving up agency.

It is about carrying less alone.

Trusting a wisdom beyond ourselves does not have to diminish inner authority. It can steady it.

It can soften the anxious edge of having to manage everything.

It can create room to breathe.

In the Christian contemplative tradition, surrender is not submission to control. It is trust in a loving Presence — a God who accompanies rather than coerces.

For some, that trust is rebuilt slowly. Carefully. Through safe relationships. Through embodied experiences of love.

How Our Relationship with Authority Shapes Us

What feels possible in the spiritual life is deeply connected to what we have lived.

If authority has been painful, sovereignty may be the most faithful posture.

If isolation has been heavy, surrender may feel like freedom.

There is no universal timeline. No prescribed arc.

In spiritual direction, I witness how differently this unfolds for each person. Some are reclaiming their voice. Others are rediscovering trust. Many are holding both at once.

Sovereignty and Surrender Are Not Opposites

They are movements within the same spiritual life.

Movements shaped by story.
By trauma.
By healing.
By experiences of love that make new possibilities safe.

For some, the path may remain rooted primarily in inner authority.

For others, it may widen into relational trust — trust in safe earthly love, or trust in a God who feels less like surveillance and more like companionship.

There is no ladder here.

Only unfolding.

And wherever you find yourself — fiercely sovereign, cautiously surrendering, or somewhere in between — there is room for you here.