The Step Didn’t Fix It. That’s Fine.
You took the step. Nothing dramatic happened. No clarity arrived. It felt more or less the same as before. That's not a sign the direction was wrong. That's what a real step looks like when the imagined version gets stripped away. The anticlimax is part of it.https://journalingwrite.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/the-step-didnt-fix-it-thats-fine/
The Step You Keep Almost Taking
You know what the next move is. You've written it down. You've seen it across your journal entries. You keep almost making it. This isn't about fear or laziness. It's about waiting for readiness that only ever comes through the step itself. So make the step smaller.https://journalingwrite.wordpress.com/2026/04/30/the-step-you-keep-almost-taking/
Mastering the Grit of Letting Go and Letting God Handle the Situation
1,656 words, 9 minutes read time.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight — Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV
This command is the ultimate field manual for the man who thinks he can out-think or out-work his circumstances; it demands you stop treating your own intellect as the final authority and start deferring to the Sovereign Architect.
The Brutal War of Surrendering the Situation to God
Men often grind their health into the dirt, torch their marriages, and hemorrhage their peace of mind because they are hooked on the lie of control. The common delusion is that one more double shift, one more aggressive text, or obsessively replaying a failure in the mind will force the world to bend. That isn’t leadership; it is pride. Anxiety is frequently dressed up as “responsibility” to make a man feel like a martyr, but in reality, it is a flat-out lack of faith. No man is powerful enough to sustain the weight of the universe, and trying to do so is an exercise in futility.
Real surrender isn’t a soft, flowery retreat for the weak. It is a violent, tactical act of the will where a man decides to stop playing God. Consider a man whose business is circling the drain, pacing the floor until 3:00 AM with a heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal. Worry is not fuel for a solution; it is spinning tires in the mud and digging a deeper hole. The turning point comes only on the knees, admitting the truth: the work has been done, but the outcome belongs to the Creator. If the ship goes down, God is still the King of the ocean.
That is the sacred art of letting go. It is the raw realization that human “understanding”—a narrow, meat-and-bone perspective—is a garbage foundation for a life. Leaning on personal intellect is leaning on a snapped crutch. Theology calls this “Providence,” which is the hard-nosed belief that God is actively steering the gears of the universe toward His purposes, even when the radar is dark. God does not need human panic to fix problems. In fact, white-knuckled gripping usually just gets in the way of the character God is trying to build. Stepping back isn’t quitting; it’s repositioning so the Almighty can take the point. No man was built to carry the weight of the “what-ifs.” Pick up the tools for today and leave the harvest to Him.
Releasing the Grip and Letting God Handle the Situation
Identify the one situation—whether it’s a wayward child, a legal battle, a crumbling marriage, or a career crisis—that is currently keeping you awake at night and eating you alive from the inside out. You have to stop the mental gymnastics and the frantic attempts to fix things that are outside your pay grade. Stand up, physically open your hands in front of you as a sign of total tactical surrender, and verbally tell God: “I am resigning as the manager of this outcome.” Be specific. Tell Him that while you will do the work set before you today, you are no longer responsible for the result. You are only responsible for your obedience in this moment. This isn’t a one-time suggestion; it is a daily transfer of weight from your breaking back onto His unshakable shoulders.
Prayer
Lord,
I’m done trying to micromanage the universe. I hand over this situation to You because I’m breaking under the weight and I was never meant to carry it. Take the wheel, take the burden, and give me the guts to stay out of Your way.
Amen.
Reflection
Author’s Note:
I usually plan the topics for these blogs months in advance, typically without any concern for what might be going on in my own life on those days. I also tend to write them well in advance and have them scheduled for release; occasionally, I’ll change the topic right before writing, but for the most part, the calendar is set. Saying all of that, this topic hits me hard, and quite honestly, this devotional is exactly what I needed to hear today. It amazes me how often these devotionals tend to align perfectly with what I need to hear at the exact moment they are scheduled to go live.
The local Ice Show season started last night with the first show, which serves as a heavy reminder of why I had to learn to let go. As many of you know, I was deeply involved in taking photos of skaters and serving in a technical advisory role for a particular organization. To avoid discussing this ad nauseam, I eventually had to hand the entire situation over to God. I am still hurt by what happened, but I can move on with the focus on God’s promise: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay” (Romans 12:19 NIV). I have faith that one day, God will deal with the people involved.
Let’s be clear: forgiveness isn’t some mandate to develop amnesia. It isn’t about forgetting the betrayal or pretending the damage didn’t happen. Even Jesus, in the book of Revelation, is shown with the scars—the pierced hands, the feet, and the wound in His side. He didn’t “forget” the cross; He moved through it. Forgiveness is about knowing exactly what debt was owed and making the executive decision to cancel it so you can move the hell on. People around me know that I still struggle with the raw hurt caused by the lies told by this person. The scars are there, but they don’t have to be shackles.
“There is no more dangerous ground for a man to occupy than the space between God and His mission, obstructing the work He intends to do.”
There is a terrifying reality in Matthew 18:6 about those who cause “one of these little ones” to stumble; it’s better for that man to have a millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. By holding onto my own desire for vengeance, I was effectively getting in the way, trying to play judge where God already has a gavel.
This is the power of what is “bound and loosed” (Matthew 16:19). If I stay obsessed with the debt they owe me, I am binding myself to them and their lies. I stay stuck in the mud of that past event. But when I choose to loose that debt—to unbind it and hand it to the Almighty—I am finally free. Forgiving the “debt” of revenge isn’t about being a doormat; it’s about tactical freedom. By handing that debt over to God, I am no longer the debt collector. I don’t have to waste my mental rounds calculating how or when they will get hit with what’s coming to them. That is God’s business, and His artillery is much more accurate than mine.
In my situation, letting God handle the “repayment” has freed me to continue doing what I love without the poison of bitterness clogging the lens. It allows me to keep showing up at the rink to capture the incredible work of these skaters. These kids are world-class athletes who put in grueling hours of practice, often in the dark of early morning, achieving feats of strength and grace that largely go unnoticed by the broader community. They deserve to have their achievements documented and celebrated. If I had stayed stuck in my anger toward the organization or the cowards involved, I would have walked away from the ice entirely. I would have let the actions of a few people rob me of my passion and rob these athletes of the recognition they’ve earned.
This freedom is what allows me to capture the moments of pure, unadulterated grit. One of my favorite photos is of a skater finally nailing an advanced jump during an event—a jump she had bled for over a long period of time. In that split second, the camera captures the culmination of months of falls, sweat, and raw determination. If I were still white-knuckled in my resentment, I would have been too distracted by the politics in the building to see the triumph on her face. Surrender protects my ability to witness those victories. When I’m behind the camera now, I’m not thinking about the technical roles I lost or the people who mistreated me. I’m thinking about the lighting, the shutter speed, and the sheer force of an athlete hitting their mark. Forgiving that debt didn’t just change my perspective; it saved my craft. It allowed me to move on with a clean slate, trusting that while I document the beauty on the ice, God is perfectly capable of handling the justice behind the scenes. That is the freedom found in surrender.
Call to Action
It’s time to make a tactical decision. Are you going to continue binding yourself to the hurt, or are you ready to experience the freedom of unbinding that debt and handing it to the Almighty? Releasing control isn’t a sign of weakness; it is the ultimate expression of grit and faith.
Your Battle Ends Today. How will you take the first step toward surrendering control and mastering the grit of letting go?
SUPPORTSUBSCRIBECONTACT MED. Bryan King
Sources
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.
#athleticAchievement #biblicalManhood #biblicalMasculinity #bindingAndLoosing #capturingGrit #characterBuilding #ChristianMenSDevotional #ChurchHurtRecovery #dealingWithEnemiesBiblically #emotionalFreedom #faithForMen #faithInTheWorkplace #faithUnderPressure #familyLeadership #figureSkatingPhotography #findingPeaceInChaos #forgivenessForMen #GodSProvidence #GodSSovereignty #healingFromLies #JesusScarsMeaning #justiceBelongsToGod #leavingItToGod #lettingGoOfControl #lettingGodTakeTheLead #maleSpiritualGrowth #Matthew1619 #Matthew186 #mentalGymnastics #mentalHealthForMen #movingOnFromBetrayal #overcomingAnxiety #overcomingBitterness #prayerForMen #prideVsFaith #Proverbs356 #releasingResentment #Romans1219 #spiritualDiscipline #spiritualGrit #spiritualLeadership #spiritualWarfareForMen #stoppingTheGrind #surrenderIsNotWeakness #surrenderingToGod #tacticalSurrender #theArtOfLettingGo #trustingGodSPlan #VengeanceIsMine
The Empty Leaderboard
2,530 words, 13 minutes read time.
Mark Holloway felt the heat of the stage lights on his neck, but for the first time in his life, it didn’t feel like a spotlight of judgment. It felt like a cleansing fire. He stayed in that embrace with Chris for a long moment—long enough for the silence in the room to turn from awkward to heavy, and finally, to something holy. When he pulled back, he saw that Chris wasn’t the “Lakefront King” he had built him up to be in his mind. Chris looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes that no Instagram filter could have hidden if Mark had been looking for them instead of looking for reasons to feel inferior.
“Mark,” Chris whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the cooling fans in the ceiling. “That lake photo? That was the only ten minutes of that entire weekend we weren’t screaming at each other. My oldest son told me he hates me on the drive home. I spent the last three nights sleeping on the couch because I don’t know how to talk to my wife anymore. I saw you walk in every Sunday and I thought, ‘There’s Holloway. He’s got that quiet, steady strength. I wish I was that composed.'”
Mark felt a dry, ironic laugh bubble up in his chest. “We’ve been haunting each other, Chris. We’ve been living in each other’s shadows, and the shadows aren’t even real.”
The pastor, a man named Miller who usually kept a tight grip on the “order of service,” didn’t move toward the microphone. He stayed in the front row, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking slightly. The “program” had officially died, and in its place, something raw was breathing. Mark looked back at the stage—the mahogany lectern, the expensive lighting, the 4K screens. It all looked like cardboard now. It was all just scaffolding for the real work happening on the floor.
Mark turned toward the rest of the men. He didn’t go back to the microphone. He didn’t need the ten thousand watts anymore. “I used to think that being a ‘Man of God’ meant being a man of answers,” he said, his natural voice carrying through the hushed rows. “I thought it meant having the firmest grip and the most certain spirit. But look at us. We’re a room full of experts on things that don’t matter and novices on the things that do. We know the stats of players who don’t know we exist, but we don’t know the fears of the man sitting six inches away from us.”
A man in the back, someone Mark recognized as a high-powered attorney named Steven, stood up. Steven was known for his sharp suits and an even sharper tongue in committee meetings. He wasn’t wearing a suit tonight. He was wearing a faded polo shirt, and he looked smaller than Mark remembered.
“I’ve spent forty thousand dollars on a kitchen remodel I didn’t need because I wanted my brother to be jealous,” Steven said, his voice cracking. “And my daughter hasn’t looked me in the eye in six months because I’m never home to eat in that kitchen. I’m a success in the courtroom and a stranger in my own hallway. I look at all of you and I feel like I’m wearing a costume.”
One by one, the “Holloway Effect” began to ripple through the pews. It wasn’t a landslide; it was a slow, steady breaking of a dam. These weren’t the polished testimonies you hear on a Sunday morning—the ones where the struggle is safely in the past tense and wrapped in a neat bow. These were “present tense” confessions.
Mark sat down on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling over the side. He felt a strange sense of peace watching the hierarchy of the church evaporate. The “Alpha” guys, the “Quiet” guys, the “Success” stories, and the “Struggling” cases were all bleeding into a single, unified color: human.
He thought about his house—the one with the mortgage that felt like a collar around his neck. He thought about the SUV with the French fry in the seat crack. He thought about the regional account he didn’t get. For years, those things had been the metrics of his soul. If the account was up, Mark was up. If the house needed a repair he couldn’t afford, Mark was “broken.” He had tied his identity to a set of moving targets, and he was exhausted from the chase.
“You know,” Mark said, catching the attention of a younger guy in the front row who looked like he was about to bolt for the exit out of sheer vulnerability-overload. “The hardest thing I ever had to do wasn’t admitting I failed. It was admitting that even if I succeeded, it wouldn’t be enough. We’re all trying to fill a canyon with pebbles. We think if we just get a bigger pebble—a faster car, a better title, a more ‘spiritual’ reputation—the hole will go away. But the hole is infinite. And the only thing that fits in an infinite hole is an infinite grace.”
He looked at his hands. They were the hands of a middle-manager. They were soft in some places, calloused in others. They weren’t the hands of a warrior or a titan of industry. They were just Mark’s hands.
“I spent my whole life wanting to be David,” he mused, referring to the biblical king. “But I think I’m actually just one of the guys in the army who was hiding in the trenches because Goliath looked too big. And the irony is, I was hiding from you guys too. I thought if you saw my fear, you’d leave me behind. I didn’t realize you were in the trench next to me, just as terrified, watching me to see if I’d run first.”
The atmosphere in the room had shifted from a “conference” to a “hospital.” The fluorescent hum of the lobby seemed miles away. Here, under the dimming stage lights, there was a sense of heavy, honest brotherhood that Mark had spent forty years looking for and forty seconds finding once he stopped lying.
He stood up again, but this time he walked toward the back of the room. He wanted to get away from the “Main Stage” entirely. He wanted to be on the level ground. He passed David, the man with the truck, who reached out and gripped Mark’s forearm. David didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes was a silent “thank you.” It was the look of a man who had been given permission to stop holding his breath.
Mark reached the back doors, the heavy oak handles cool to the touch. He turned back one last time to look at the room. The men were no longer sitting in neat rows. They were gathered in small clusters, talking, some with hands on each other’s shoulders, some just sitting in a shared, comfortable silence. The “Leaderboard” was gone. The “Highlight Reel” had been edited down to the raw footage.
“I’m going home,” Mark whispered to himself.
But home didn’t feel like a place he had to perform for anymore. Home was just the next stop on a journey where he didn’t have to be anyone but Mark Holloway. He pushed the doors open, the cool night air hitting him like a physical blessing.
The cool night air was sharp, smelling of rain and the distant scent of pine mulch from the church’s landscaping. Mark stood on the sidewalk for a moment, letting the silence of the parking lot wash over him. The gravel crunched under his feet as he walked toward his SUV—the silver crossover he had spent so many years despising because it wasn’t something else.
As he reached for the door handle, he heard the heavy thud of the sanctuary doors opening behind him. He turned to see Jim, the group leader with the booming charisma, stepping out into the light of the entryway. Jim looked different without the pulpit in front of him. He looked smaller, his shoulders slightly hunched against the chill.
“Mark! Wait up,” Jim called out. He jogged down the concrete steps, his breath blooming in the air like small, white ghosts. When he reached Mark, he didn’t offer a handshake or a pat on the back. He just stood there, looking at the silver SUV.
“I’ve lived in this town for fifteen years,” Jim said softly. “I’ve led this group for five. And tonight was the first time I felt like I wasn’t the only one in the room who didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”
Mark leaned against his car door. “You too, Jim? I figured you had a direct line. You always look like you’ve got the next five years mapped out.”
Jim let out a short, hollow laugh. “Mark, I spend my Tuesday afternoons rehearsing my ‘spontaneous’ prayers in the shower so I don’t sound like an idiot. I stay up until two in the morning wondering if I’m just a professional Christian who’s lost the plot. When you got up there and talked about the leaderboard… I realized I’m the one who built the leaderboard. I thought that was my job. To keep everyone climbing.”
“It’s a long way down,” Mark said, not unkindly.
“It is,” Jim agreed. “But the air is better down here, isn’t it?”
They stood in silence for a minute, two men in a parking lot, no longer defined by their titles or their perceived successes. Jim reached out and squeezed Mark’s shoulder. “See you Sunday, Mark. And hey… don’t worry about the parking spot next to David’s truck. He told me he’s selling it tomorrow. He’s going back to a sedan so he can start paying off his kid’s tuition.”
Mark watched Jim walk to his own car, then he climbed into the driver’s seat of his SUV. He didn’t turn on the radio. He didn’t check his phone for notifications. He just sat in the dark. He reached down and picked up the lone, shriveled French fry from the console—the tiny, greasy monument to his “mediocre” life. He looked at it for a second and then tossed it into the small trash bag hanging from the dash. It was a small act of cleaning, a minor order in the chaos.
The drive home felt shorter than usual. He wasn’t racing the phantom cars of his imagination. He wasn’t rehearsing the speech he’d give his boss to explain why the regional account was better off with the younger guy. He just drove. He noticed the way the streetlights reflected in the puddles, the way the neighborhood houses looked warm and yellow in the dark.
When he pulled into his driveway, he saw the light in the living room was still on. He saw the shadow of his wife, Sarah, moving past the window. Usually, this was the moment the “Mask” went on. He would straighten his posture, wipe the exhaustion from his face, and prepare to be the “Standard-Issue Husband.”
But tonight, Mark Holloway stayed in the car for a moment longer. He looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He saw a man who was tired, yes, but he also saw a man who was finally, undeniably real. He thought about his son, Leo, and the bike chain that needed fixing. He thought about the daughter who was becoming a stranger and the wife who deserved to know the man she actually married, not the one he was trying to be.
He opened the garage door, the motor groaning with a familiar, domestic rhythm. He walked through the mudroom, kicking off his sneakers. The house smelled like laundry detergent and the taco seasoning from dinner.
Sarah was on the couch, a book open in her lap. She looked up as he walked in, her eyes searching his face with that intuitive, terrifyingly accurate “wife-radar.”
“How was the meeting?” she asked, her voice soft. “Was it the usual? Coffee and a ‘be a better man’ lecture?”
Mark walked over to the couch. He didn’t stand over her. He sat down on the floor by her feet, leaning his back against the cushions. It was a position of vulnerability, of being “less than” in a way that felt entirely right.
“No,” Mark said, reaching up to take her hand. “It wasn’t that at all. I think… I think I finally quit my job today.”
Sarah’s eyes widened, her hand tensing in his. “The firm? Mark, we can’t—”
“No, not the firm,” he interrupted, turning to look at her. “I quit the other job. The one where I try to be everyone else. I’m just going to be me for a while. Is that okay? It might be a little messy. I might not have the best truck in the lot or the most polished prayer in the room.”
Sarah looked at him for a long beat, her expression softening into something Mark hadn’t seen in years—a look of pure, uncomplicated relief. She reached down and ran her fingers through his thinning hair.
“Mark Holloway,” she whispered. “I’ve been waiting for that guy to come home for a decade.”
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Leo was probably awake, sneaking a book under the covers. Tomorrow, there would be bills to pay. Tomorrow, the younger guy would start the regional account. Tomorrow, the world would still be full of leaderboards and highlight reels.
But as Mark sat there on the floor, his wife’s hand in his and the weight of the world finally off his shoulders, he knew he wasn’t afraid of tomorrow anymore. He had found the one thing that no amount of competition could provide: he had been found out, and he was still loved.
The leaderboard was gone. The race was over. And for the first time in his life, Mark Holloway was exactly where he wanted to be. He was home.
Author’s Note
This story is for the man sitting in his driveway with the engine idling, staring at the garage door and wondering when the hell he’s finally going to feel like he’s “arrived.”
We’ve all been sold a lie. We’ve been told that manhood is a ladder, and if you aren’t climbing, you’re suffocating. We walk into our churches, our offices, and our gyms with our chests out and our secrets locked in the basement, terrified that if the guy next to us sees a single dent in our armor, we’re finished. We spend our lives comparing our raw, unedited internal disasters to the polished, high-definition highlight reels of everyone else.
Mark Holloway is the guy in the mirror. He’s the man who realized that the “Leaderboard” he was killing himself to climb was actually a gallows. He finally understood that you can’t be loved if you refuse to be known, and you can’t be known if you’re too busy pretending to be a goddamn superhero.
Stop looking at the guy in the next lane. Stop measuring your worth by the badge on your grille or the title on your door. As it says in Galatians 6:4:
“Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.”
This story is a punch in the mouth to the “Sunday Morning Mask.” It’s a reminder that the most masculine thing you will ever do isn’t winning a fight or closing a deal—it’s having the stones to drop the shield and tell the truth.
The race is a scam, brothers. Step off the track. The only person you’re supposed to outrun is the fake version of yourself you’ve been dragging around for years. Go inside. Be real. Be home.
Call to Action
If this story struck a chord, don’t just scroll on. Join the brotherhood—men learning to build, not borrow, their strength. Subscribe for more stories like this, drop a comment about where you’re growing, or reach out and tell me what you’re working toward. Let’s grow together.
D. Bryan King
Sources
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.
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Journaling
Bryan King