The Heart's Surrender

Peace on the Other Side of Pain

In the glorious morning of Resurrection Sunday, Christians join together in a triumphant celebration of victory over death and sin. But do we miss something in our narrative of conquest? This essay explores the transformative power of surrender. Jesus conquered death not by denying it, but by surrendering to it as an act of love. Perhaps this paradox is the greatest mystery of all at the heart of the Christian message, that God came to conquer through submission.

I felt arms wrapped around me, and as hands gently began to pry my tense fingers open, I heard a whisper, “Let go.” 

I had been arguing with my boyfriend when a simple gesture of an arm triggered an instinctive reaction in me. Every muscle froze in place—arms across my chest, hands fiercely gripping my sweatshirt sleeves as I fought desperately to stay in control. My body was reliving memories my mind had long since buried. 

Noticing the change, my boyfriend stopped mid-sentence and knelt beside me. I had two options: I could keep fighting the pain, or I could surrender to it while enveloped in the peaceful, safe embrace of someone who loves me.

When I was twenty-one, I dropped out of college and moved back home to Texas under the heavy burden of depression and anxiety. The version of me that arrived at my parents’ doorstep was a shell of the seventeen-year-old who had left four years earlier. During the day I struggled to get through a single sentence without spacing out halfway through, and at night I’d wake up with panic attacks triggered by nightmares that felt more real than any dream I’d ever had before. I was going through the motions, but inside I was empty.

I didn't realize it then, but I'd spent my entire life burying trauma deep within me. The emotions I felt during my late teen years were unbearable—pain, heartbreak, sorrow, anger. I moved to Idaho in search of a peace that I believed existed but had never felt before. I had no idea what was wrong; I only knew that everything hurt and nothing seemed to help. So I shut all the emotions out, turned them all off, ignored the pain, and kept moving forward. Eventually, the facade broke, and with it, so did I.

A PTSD diagnosis felt far too big to fit me, like a toddler trying on her mother's shoes. I spent the next three years tripping over that diagnosis as I tried to penetrate the fog that consumed my memories. The physical symptoms of nausea and dizziness that accompanied any attempt to reprocess my past were sometimes so intense I was afraid I would pass out. My body was trying to protect me from reliving those memories, too afraid of hurting to embrace the relief that would follow. Even when I managed to process an event or memory, I would still sometimes walk away from a session feeling discontent or hollow. It felt like even though the pain was gone, there wasn’t anything to fill the void it left within me. The more I worked on healing my wounds, the more I could feel my body fighting against it.

We are navigating a world where broken relationships and burnt bridges engrave seemingly permanent marks upon our souls. Throughout mortality, we experience love and joy as we form deep friendships and intimate relationships that impact our lives. And since we live in an imperfect world, we also experience heartache and pain when betrayed trust leaves us feeling broken and hopeless. As we process this kind of pain, those scars can bind themselves to our identity, and the fear of losing a piece of ourselves becomes so powerful it keeps us clinging to the discomfort far longer than we should. However, our journey through mortality is not solely about enduring heartache, but learning to surrender it to a loving Father in Heaven for true refinement.

Holding on to past experiences is not inherently harmful. Trauma responses develop as a result of our bodies adapting to a hostile environment, protecting us the best we can if the situation arises again. Holding on can shield us from further harm, fostering growth and resilience. But, like unprocessed trauma, holding on to pain eventually interferes with our personal and spiritual relationships, slowing our journey toward our divine potential and hindering our efforts to become like God. Elder Gong taught us, ¨Especially when hurt and pain are deep, repairing our relationships and healing our hearts is hard, perhaps impossible for us to do ourselves. But Heaven will give us strength and wisdom beyond our own to know when to hold on and how to let go.¨

Caught Between Pain and Progress

In C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce,” we travel through an imagined afterlife and encounter many ghosts and spirits, one of whom is described as a “dark and oily” young man plagued by an annoying companion: a small red lizard perched on his shoulder, “twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear.” The man complains about the presence of the revolting reptile but simultaneously seems attached to it. 

The lizard is influencing the ghost, manipulating his emotions, and causing him physical distress and ailment. The small creature has repeatedly broken promises, and yet the ghost allows the pest to control his life, even his dreams.

When a flaming angel comes and offers to kill the lizard for him, the young man wants the lizard dead but hesitates at first, looking for every reason to leave the lizard alone. He makes excuse after excuse to not rid himself of the creature: he can keep the lizard in check; the lizard is asleep so he’s sure to no longer be a problem; the ghost is feeling sick and another day would be better.

“I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it,” the small ghost tells the angel, but the angel only replies, “The gradual process is of no use at all.”

As the angel continues to approach, the ghost yells out, “Get back! You’re burning me. How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did . . . you’re hurting me.” The angel replies saying, “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.” The ghost continues to cry about being burned, tormented, mocked, and torn to pieces—his fear of letting go of the lizard taking over. The angel can’t kill the lizard without the ghost’s permission, so he continues to stand there, his flaming hand inches from ridding the ghost of his tormentor.

The lizard begins to worry for itself and resumes his chattering in the young man’s ear, begging for its life with manipulative insults and empty promises.

Taking this in, the ghost finally says, “You’re right. It would be better to be dead than to live with this creature,” and reluctantly agrees to let the lizard die. Engulfing the lizard in flame, the angel tosses the burning writhing creature aside, and the man momentarily yelps in pain. But the lizard doesn’t die; instead, it grows, transforming into a beautiful silvery white stallion. At the same time, the small ghost changes as well, growing in size until he is almost as large as the angel. No longer appearing as “dark and oily” wisps of smoke, his solid body glows golden. With a cry of joy, the transformed young man hops on the horse’s back and rides into the sunrise. 

The man should have let the lizard go long before we meet him. Holding on to his unwanted companion made him sick; he gave the small creature too much control over his life and stopped him from progressing towards his full potential. However, the lizard had been his companion for so long that perhaps the man couldn’t see himself without the creature. It had become a part of who he was. Those around the young man wanted to help him, but releasing the alluring creature had to be his choice. Even when the timing was right, not even an angel could force him to let go. Giving in to the discomfort, it was with grievous contemplation and struggle that he finally let someone intervene. In the end, surrendering his pain didn't just bring him relief; it transformed him.  

The Peace That Follows Pain

PTSD was my red lizard. Like the young man, I wanted to be healed of my trauma and rid of my PTSD. But I didn’t want to do the work. I knew that combing through repressed memories and reprocessing old wounds would be painful, but without the pain, I would never truly be made whole. I wanted the “gradual process,” but like the angel, God tells us, “The gradual process is of no use at all.” Instead, he puts us through the refiner’s fire. The act of surrendering to our Heavenly Father is humbling and purifying. As we turn our hearts to him and the example of the Savior, we learn how to rely on them for relief from the pain we have grown accustomed to.

The Savior's ministry and sacrifice exemplify the profound nature of pain and what it means to give that pain to God. Throughout Christ’s life, he is ridiculed, mocked, and abused, but he doesn’t carry that pain with him. Unlike the ghost, Christ didn’t let his suffering turn into a voice of negativity and temptation. Even after suffering for the world’s sins in Gethsemane, bleeding from every pore, Christ was betrayed by those he trusted, nailed to the cross, and crucified. But instead of facing these traumas alone, he trusted God to help him carry these burdens. 

Hanging in physical agony, mocked, beaten, and abused, Christ’s heart broke from the actions of those he chose to love. When the pain seemed too much to bear, he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Our loving Father in Heaven had not abandoned or forgotten Christ, but he chose not to intervene. I imagine the Father’s silent encouragement for His Only Begotten Son to hold on a little longer. When the time came for Christ to let go, he must have felt God's approval as he said, “Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Only then did God take his pain. Heaven showed him how to let go, but Christ still had to give himself freely before God removed the pain.

Christ's death on the cross, while initially tragic, delivers hope and redemption to all of us suffering from burdens too heavy to lift on our own. Christ could not be resurrected alone; he needed God to help him become even more than the perfect man he already was. But first, he had to be willing to face the pain that tied him to this world. His death brought the release of physical and emotional pain and then, with time and the power of our Almighty God, Christ was resurrected, securing our path to redemption from sin and providing tangible proof that, with God's power, we can become so much more than we are on our own. Christ’s death teaches us that when we surrender ourselves to God, a part of us will undergo a symbolic death, but like the little red lizard, death is not the end.

As I relived my past traumas during that argument with my boyfriend, the fight began to seem irrelevant compared to the internal battle I’d been holding on to. Hearing that whispered encouragement to let go, I surrendered to the pain I’d been desperate to avoid. My arms released their death grip and sobs flooded from me as the memories came back. But I wasn’t alone in that pain. My boyfriend sat with me as I cried for a few more minutes and then the episode was over. In the aftermath, I didn’t feel empty. Instead, the pain was replaced with peace. My initial response—my effort to stay in control in the face of a perceived danger—was a survival skill I once learned to keep me safe, but now holding on to that defensive posture just kept me from progressing beyond the trauma and into someone stronger. 

Healing is a cycle that I have had to walk through many times, each time choosing to surrender myself and my pain to God. With that release, I am also vowing to no longer define myself by a diagnosis or my most broken moments but instead to accept that I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father. In turn, I have found instant relief, though not instant healing. It isn’t a magical cure that erases all the painful memories and trauma responses from my past, but it is a step towards being made truly whole. With that step, I have gained the one thing I was searching for my entire life—peace. 

When we surrender our pain to the Lord, he takes it according to his timing. Sometimes, that timing seems slow, and sometimes, it comes far too soon, causing us to feel like a part of us is dying in the refiner’s fire. But in that symbolic death, God makes space for us to become clean and whole. 

When Christ took our sins and pain upon himself, he turned them over to the Father and was resurrected, setting the expectation and providing a way for us to follow. When we hold onto hurt and betrayal, we may make the best of them, but alone, we cannot transform them into something more significant. Through Christ’s example and revelation from our Divine Creator, we can know when to surrender our hardships, allowing the Lord to reshape and return them to us, forever altered into something infinitely more beautiful than before.

Madeline Hopkin is a social media manager with a deep passion for storytelling. Her writing explores the themes of personal growth, trauma, and divine identity.

Art by Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan.

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