I had a plan. I actually had a really good one, if you'd asked me at twenty-three. Business degree. Decent job lined up. Girlfriend who was way out of my league and somehow hadn't figured that out yet. I was going to be the guy who had it together. My parents' friends would ask about me and my mom would smile and say something about how well I was doing.
Then I started taking painkillers after a back injury, and within about eighteen months, every single piece of that plan was gone. The job. The girl. The apartment. The savings. All of it. Gone. And I was standing in the ruins of a life I was supposed to have, wondering how it all went sideways so fast.
The honest answer? It didn't go fast. I just wasn't paying attention. I was too busy being "in control."
The Most Dangerous Lie I Told Myself
"I've got this under control." If those six words are on my gravestone, they'll be the truest thing ever written about me — not because they were accurate, but because I said them more than anything else in my life.
I said them when I started taking more pills than prescribed. I said them when I moved from pills to something cheaper because the prescriptions ran out. I said them when I lost the job, when the girl left, when I was sleeping in my car and telling my mom I was staying at a friend's place.
I was never in control. Not once. But admitting that was scarier than the addiction itself, because if I wasn't in control, then what? Who was? Nobody? That was terrifying. God? That meant trusting someone I couldn't see with a life I'd already destroyed. That was terrifying too.
Day Seven
I remember the moment I actually surrendered. Not "rededicated my life" at a church event. Not the performative kind. The real kind, where you've got nothing left to bargain with.
Day seven of treatment. I'd detoxed, which is exactly as awful as it sounds. My head was clear for the first time in years, which honestly made everything worse because now I could see the full scope of the damage without the blur.
A counselor — her name was Janet, had a thick Southern accent and this way of looking at you like she could see right through the BS — asked me, "What are you willing to let God have?"
I almost laughed. "I don't have anything left to give Him."
She didn't miss a beat. "Good. That's where He does His best work."
That night I prayed the most honest prayer of my life. No religious language. No thee's or thou's. Just: God, I can't do this. I've tried. I've tried everything. I'm done. If you're real, take it. Take all of it. Because I'm going to die if you don't.
I don't know how to describe what happened next. Nothing changed on the outside. The cravings didn't vanish. The shame didn't lift. But something inside me — this white-knuckle grip I'd been holding on with for years — loosened. Just slightly. And in that loosening, there was quiet.
Learning to Hold Things Loosely
I'm still not great at this. I'm a planner by nature, which is kind of funny given how spectacularly my plans have failed. I still catch myself gripping too tight — to schedules, to outcomes, to the idea that if I just manage everything carefully enough, nothing bad will happen again.
But there's a difference between being responsible and being a control freak, and in recovery, that line gets real blurry. Discipline matters — I'm not saying throw your schedule out the window and "let go and let God" your way through life. That's a bumper sticker, not a strategy. But there's a difference between stewarding your life and strangling it.
Surrender isn't quitting. It's more like... opening your hands. You're still holding the thing. But you're holding it loosely enough that if God wants to rearrange it, He can. And honestly, given my track record with arranging things, I should probably let Him.
What He Built From the Wreckage
I won't sugarcoat this: surrender didn't fix everything. The consequences of my choices were real and they stuck around. Some relationships never recovered. My career went in a completely different direction than I'd planned. My life at thirty-five looks nothing like what twenty-three-year-old me imagined.
But it looks like something. Something real. Something built on honesty instead of performance. The life I planned led me to a treatment center. The life God's building — it's harder, messier, and somehow better.
I still don't understand all of it. I probably never will. But I've stopped needing to.
If you're holding something with clenched fists right now — a plan, a relationship, an outcome you're desperate for — I'd just gently suggest: open your hands. Not because it's easy. Because the alternative is exhausting, and God's got a better track record than you do. He definitely has a better track record than me.