The Courage to Surrender
There was a time in my life when surrender felt like failure. To step back, to release my grip, felt like giving up on myself. I remember the weight of being told I might never play volleyball again. I had built my identity around the court, around the competition, around the rhythm of training and winning. When it was suddenly taken away from me, I clung to the idea that if I fought hard enough, if I forced my body and my will, I could control the outcome.
But control is heavy. It narrows our vision, blinds us to the possibilities that live outside of our plan. Healing was not linear. Some days I could manage one hit at the net, and other days I couldn’t play at all. The breakthrough came when I stopped measuring myself by how quickly I was improving, and instead found strength in the simple act of showing up. The exhale after a single good hit was no less powerful than the roar of a championship game.
That season of my life revealed something I carry with me still: surrender is not weakness. It is not defeat. Surrender is courage. It asks us to release the illusion of control and trust that something larger is guiding us forward.
Life will always offer moments where we cannot bend the outcome to our will. The job we thought was ours, the relationship we thought would last, the plan that suddenly changes. In those spaces, we can either tighten our fists or open our hands.
What I’ve come to understand is that surrender doesn’t mean stepping away from effort. It means choosing faith over fear. It means giving your full presence to the step in front of you, even if the destination looks nothing like you imagined.
The irony is that when I surrendered, when I stopped forcing and began allowing, doors opened that I didn’t know existed. I became player of the year in Canada. I broke records. And years later, I found myself not only as an athlete, but as an author, a speaker, and a woman who could finally see that life has always been carrying me exactly where I needed to go.
Surrender is not an ending. It is the beginning of a deeper, more honest way of living.
— Rachel Marie
