Lent 2025 Day 19: Surrender, Uncertainty & Seeking Peace

Flannel Diaries
Mar 26
5 min read

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” – Isaiah 26:3

They say, “When you make plans, the universe laughs.” And honestly? I believe it.

Looking back on my life, I’ve mostly lived in the moment. My friend Asal believed in fate. If we couldn’t decide what to do on a Friday night, she’d flip a coin. Go out or stay in? This bar or that one? Heads we dance, tails we watch movies. We let the universe decide. And most nights, we ended up wherever the coin told us. Not because the coin had some magical power—but because we trusted that no matter where we went, we’d have a good time together.

Flipping a coin seems silly, but maybe it reflects what we do every day. We gamble—on love, on trust, on our own ability to survive hardship. We flip the coin, knowing the outcome might be awful… and hoping it might be beautiful.

"When you make plans, the universe laughs." My favorite place to be: the golf course.

Life, like golf, rarely goes how we plan. If you've ever played a round, you know what I mean. There are shots that land you in places you never intended to be—deep rough, tree lines, behind a boulder, or just buried in a sand trap. I like hitting out of trouble. It sounds weird, I know. But there’s something about it that appeals to me.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in trouble in life too, and somehow always found a way to swing through it.

In golf, you’ve got two choices: the safe shot or the hero shot.

If I take the safe shot, chip it back into the fairway, I’m probably walking away with a bogey or double bogey. It’s fine. Safe. Predictable. But sometimes, when I’m feeling bold—or stubborn—I go for it. That ridiculous shot between branches, over a pond, under pressure. I tell myself, “You’ve got this.”

And sometimes? I make that miraculous shot. And other times? I shank it right into the woods. But that’s life, isn’t it? You do your best, and you take the risk.

Sometimes, I end up with the same score either way. But the shot—the experience—is different. And that’s the point. It’s not always about the scorecard. It’s about the journey.

When I think about those coin flips with Asal, I realize it was never about the destination. It was about the journey we took together.

Even if we ended up at a dive bar with bad music and weird vibes, we laughed, we talked, we shared stories in the car. One night, while I was driving us somewhere, she said to me, “You need to treat me like a carton of eggs. Like a precious package you need to get from one place to another. Because I am. I’m a gift.”

Yes, yes you were, Asal.

To this day, I still think about that when someone is in the passenger seat. It’s those little moments—those comments you don’t expect to remember—that end up shaping how you live.

If I’d made different choices, my life would be very different. If I hadn’t finished college. If I hadn’t left California. If I’d said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes.

People say every experience is meant to prepare you for what’s next, that life is a series of levels we’re trying to move through. My roommate says that’s just a narrative we create to make life feel less meaningless. And maybe she’s right.

But I still believe there’s something to it. Some of it, anyway. There has to be.

I’ve been trying to let go of expectations. Of myself. Of others. If I don’t expect anything, I’m not disappointed. But that’s also a bit of a trap. Because it’s sad to think I expect so little from people.

And yet, expectations can be dangerous. They can lead us to demand things from others that they were never meant to give us. They can lead to resentment. To pain.

So here I am. Trying to live without attachments to outcomes. To people. To “stuff.”

Letting go doesn’t come easy. But no one gets out of this alive. And maybe the only thing we can control is how we move through it.

We are always so quick to move on. From past hurts. From trauma. From pain.

I was on the phone with a friend recently. She kept apologizing for having needs. For being “too much.” For wanting more from people in her life. And I stopped her.

Stop apologizing for having needs.

"These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them." - Rumi

We’ve been conditioned to feel shame when we’re vulnerable. To keep our pain private so no one feels uncomfortable. But pain doesn’t go away just because we ignore it. In fact, it settles into our bodies, into our breath, into our bones.

Unfelt pain becomes disease. Or “dis-ease,” as the self-help gurus say. And it’s real. It builds as cortisol. Stress. Anxiety.

At 50, I’m realizing how much stress I carry—even when I look calm. When I went to the ED with appendicitis, my blood pressure was sky-high, but my heart rate was low. The nurse asked if I was an athlete. I said, “I golf.” I guess after a lifetime of emotional and physical pain, I’ve trained my body to stay calm even in crisis.

But honestly? I don’t want to just be good at managing pain. I want peace.

Peace in my body. Peace in my mind. Peace in the world.

That would be nice. That would bring me joy.