There are moments in life when what looks like strength is actually survival. For a long time, I believed I could endure anything if I just worked harder, loved deeper, and stayed committed. I was in a marriage that was controlling and narcissistic, but I thought I could save it. I believed that loyalty and perseverance were virtues that, if practiced long enough, would eventually bring healing. I was wrong.
At the same time, someone I trusted deeply—one of my closest friends—embezzled me out of over $300,000. It wasn’t just the money that disappeared. It was trust. Safety. The sense that the ground beneath me was solid. Everything collapsed at once: my marriage, my finances, my sense of self, and the identity I had built as a woman who could always handle things on her own.
The weight of it all became unbearable.
There came a moment when I was standing on the edge—emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I was so overwhelmed that I contemplated ending my life. In that darkest hour, the police intervened. One officer looked at me and said words that cut through the fog like light breaking through a storm:
“He is not worth it, Eydie.”
That sentence saved my life.
It was the first crack in the armor I had worn for decades—the armor of self-reliance, control, and never needing anyone. Including God.
Soon after, I finally asked to be free. I asked for a divorce. But what followed was something far deeper than legal separation. I was asked—by God—to surrender everything.
Not just my marriage.
Not just my career.
Not just my finances.
Everything.
The hardest surrender of all was money.
All my life, I had worked. I had provided. I had depended on no one—not a man, not a system, not even God. My identity was built on being capable, productive, and independent. Letting go of financial control felt like stepping into free fall without a net.
But I obeyed.
I surrendered my marriage.
I surrendered my career.
I surrendered my finances.
I quit everything—because that is what the Lord asked me to do.
And something extraordinary happened.
It felt as if tons of bricks fell off my shoulders—bricks I didn’t even know I was carrying. The constant pressure. The fear. The responsibility I had mistaken for strength. When I laid it all down, I felt lighter than I had ever felt in my life.
Now, I have far less than I once did.
And yet, I live more abundantly.
I live supernaturally.
I am provided for in ways I could never have orchestrated. I experience peace that cannot be explained by circumstances. I wake up unburdened by the relentless need to control outcomes. I finally understand what it means to rest.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28 now live in my bones:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
I was weary.
I was burdened.
And when I finally came—empty-handed—I found a kind of rest I had never known.
This was the moment everything changed.