What happens when someone stops trying to carry everything alone and places it all in God’s hands?

On The Inner Life, Bishop Donald Hying reflected on the power of surrender, and one caller’s testimony showed just how life-changing that surrender can be. Marissa called in from Springfield, Illinois, and shared that during Lent in 2025, she was struggling with alcohol and using it “as a crutch” to cope with past trauma and painful emotions. But after praying the Surrender Novena, everything changed.

“On March 12th, I gave up alcohol. Thanks be to God,” she said. Nearly a year later, she was still marveling at what the Lord had done. “I do not know, I cannot tell you what happened to my desire to drink. It is gone. It has been removed from me. Literally saved my life.”

Her words were raw, grateful, and full of hope. Marissa did not describe self-improvement in purely human terms. She described grace. “It’s a choice every day to surrender to Him,” she said. “Every day is our conversion.”

Bishop Hying pointed to her witness as a living example of the Gospel’s power. “You’ve been set free, and that’s the power of the gospel,” he told her. He connected her healing to the deeper spiritual truth that all of us are tempted to cling to something other than God. As he explained, idolatry is not just an ancient problem. “We have idolatry today. It’s just more sophisticated than it was 3,000 years ago.”

That is why surrender matters so much. Bishop Hying spoke about the Surrender Novena, centered on the simple prayer: “Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything.” He described it as a path to peace, freedom, and wisdom, especially in moments when we do not know what to do next.

He also turned to the Gospels, recalling Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed boat. The lesson is simple and profound: in our own stormy moments, we must “wake up the sleeping Christ and hand it over to him.”

Marissa’s story is a reminder that surrender is not weakness. It is trust. It is the daily decision to let God be God. And when we do, He can bring freedom we never could have given ourselves.

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