It’s January. By the time the calendar flipped, everyone else seemed ready with vision boards and word-of-the-year posts. But not you. Last year is still sitting on your chest. You’re not just weary; you’re wary. Guarded. Your body still carries what last year took. So does your heart—people you loved, opportunities that slipped through your fingers, the illusion of safety you didn’t realize was propping you up, a version of your health you thought you’d keep, maybe even the version of yourself you thought would exist by now.
You’ve prayed. You’ve journaled. You want to move on. But if you’re honest, you still don’t know how to release what this year took from you without pretending it didn’t matter—when it did.
Release isn’t amnesia. It’s unclenching. It’s a holy process, not a light switch—a way of partnering with God’s Creative ProcessTM in the ruins of last year rather than dragging everything behind you.
Part 1 gave you permission to grieve and guided you through naming what was taken. (If you haven’t done that work yet, start there—you can’t release what you haven’t acknowledged.) Now, let’s talk about how—the mechanics of loosening your grip.
Why Release Feels So Hard (And So Holy)
Part of why it’s so hard to “just let it go” is that you’re not crazy—you’re human. God designed us to attach—to people He sent, to dreams He breathed on, to identities and futures we honestly believed God gave us. Attachment isn’t a weakness—it’s how love works. So, when someone says, “Girl, you should be over that by now,” they’re dismissing the way your soul was wired from the beginning. And you’re wrestling with love, memory, and meaning.
Attachment isn't a weakness—it's how love works. Share on XBut for many of us, there’s another layer. We inherited messaging that complicates release: Be strong. Keep moving. Don’t let them see you sweat. Others have it worse. And the church added its own soundtrack: Praise your way through. Let go and let God. Forget those things which are behind—often quoted like a command to perform, not an invitation to heal.
In other words, when your body and soul are grieving, your training says, “Perform.” That’s the conflict. And it’s exhausting.
It’s why “new year, new you” rings hollow.
The Bible’s picture of release looks more like sabbath, Jubilee, casting your cares—slowing down, opening your hands, returning what you’ve been clutching to the One who owns it all. Learning how to release what this year took from you isn’t about blaming yourself, rushing into productivity, erasing grief, minimizing harm, or pretending you’re fine.
Release is agreeing with God about what’s yours to carry forward and what belongs in His hands.
I know this conflict well. After Reggie died, I learned how to sound “strong” in public—leading, teaching, showing up—while crying in the shower and calling it weakness instead of grief. My body knew the truth my training wouldn’t let me say out loud.
God’s not asking you to lie about what happened; He’s inviting you to stop letting what happened lord over you.
The First Mechanic: Release Your Job from Being God
You’ve named what was taken. Now comes the quieter battle: the temptation to believe you alone must fix it.
Maybe you’ve made a subtle vow without realizing it: If I had done more. Seen it coming. Been better. Prayed harder. This wouldn’t have happened. You start replaying conversations, rewriting decisions, promising yourself that next time you’ll see it coming. For many of us who were trained to carry whole households, churches, and communities on our backs, that vow runs deep.
We don’t just grieve loss—we audit it. We assign ourselves blame, then sentence ourselves to endless effort.
And suddenly, without meaning to, we’ve taken on a job that was never ours. This is where learning how to release what this year took from you becomes spiritual work.
That’s not humility; that’s over-responsibility—idolatry. It’s a subtle way of trying to sit in God’s seat.
Think of Joseph. He worked faithfully wherever he landed—Potiphar’s house, the prison, the palace—but he never made himself responsible for writing the whole story. He named God as the Interpreter and Provider. He did his part. God did His.
If you’re wondering how to release what this year took from you, start here: look at your list and circle the losses you’re trying to “work to death” or “figure to death.” Then pray, slowly: “Lord, I release the job of being God over this situation back to You.”
Joseph did that. You can do the same.
The Second Mechanic: Release Requires Discernment, Not Denial
Release doesn’t mean pretending the loss never happened. It means discerning what it left behind—and deciding what gets to stay.
In Part 1, you named what was taken. Now we ask a deeper question: What is this meant to become in you?
Everything you carried into this year isn’t meant to stay with you. Some of it is seed—pain God will grow into compassion, wisdom, new obedience, even new boundaries you didn’t know you needed. And some of it is baggage—lies, vows, shame, bitterness, self-blame that attached itself to the loss but was never part of who God says you are.
Hear me clearly: not everything you picked up last year has your name on it. Some of it belongs back in God’s hands.
Joseph didn’t release the famine. He couldn’t. But he discerned what God was doing through it—and that discernment shaped everything that came next.
Go back to your Part 1 list. Highlight what feels like a seed and what feels like baggage. No judgment. Just honesty. Invite the Spirit to sort them with you. With His guidance, you’ll know the difference—seed hurts but grows you; baggage just weighs. So, seeds get surrendered so they can be planted. Baggage gets surrendered so it can be dropped.
Learning how to release what this year took from you begins with deciding, with God, what stays and what must go. You’re not erasing the past. You’re separating residue from identity.
The Third Mechanic: Release Is a Posture, Not a Moment
One of the biggest myths many of us inherited—especially those raised on altar calls and revival culture—is that release happens once, dramatically, at the altar while the organ plays softly.
You cry hard enough, pray long enough, fall on your knees at the right moment, and boom… it’s gone.
Sometimes it happens that way. Most of the time, it doesn’t.
In real life, learning how to release what this year took from you looks more like repeated surrender than one dramatic scene. Some days, you lay it down in the morning and find it back in your chest by lunch. And releasing the same thing twice isn’t failure—it’s faithfulness.
Grief is like a tide. It recedes, you breathe, and you think you’re done. Then it returns, unexpected, pulling at you again. Each time it returns, you release again. That’s not a weakness. That’s the work.
Even Jesus, in Gethsemane, prayed the same prayer three times. Let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Yours. Three times. If the Son of God needed repetition, why do we expect ourselves to get it right once and never look back?
Release isn’t a moment you achieve. It’s a posture you return to. A way of opening your hands again and again until your heart learns to follow. Over time, that posture shapes your heart more than any single dramatic night ever could.
Release isn’t a moment. It’s a lifestyle of trusting God with what you can’t carry alone.
The Fourth Mechanic: Let God Re-Seat You
Loss doesn’t just take people and possibilities; it scrambles who you are. One day, you are a wife; the next, a widow. You were a daughter, and now you’re a full-time caregiver. You were the reliable one at work, and now you’re “in transition.” The strong friend who never needs anything suddenly needs everything and doesn’t know For many of us, those roles we hide behind feel safer than the ache underneath.
For those of us carrying the “strong woman” script—or hiding behind church titles that make us feel useful—this is destabilizing. When the role shifts, we wonder who we are without it.
Learning how to release what this year took from you includes this: letting God re-seat you.
But remember Joseph. Faithfulness didn’t change his circumstances immediately, but it changed where he stood within them—overseer in Potiphar’s house, trusted inmate, then second-in-command. His position shifted even before full restoration came.
Ask yourself: What role did this year force me into that God never asked me to live in forever?
Then write one sentence: “I release the role of _____ as my whole identity.”
You’re not only the roles loss handed you. You’re who God called you before any of this broke.
The Fifth Mechanic: Give Your Release Somewhere to Go
Sometimes the reason you feel stuck isn’t that you don’t want to let go, but because you don’t know where to put what you’re carrying. You can’t just think your way out of grief. Sometimes, when you’re learning how to release what this year took from you, you need a container—a place for that weight to live that isn’t your nervous system.
For people like us, containers might look simple but holy: a dated journal entry you don’t edit, a letter you write and never send, a whispered prayer in the car after work, a list you burn or bury as an act of surrender. None of these erase the pain. They give it a place to live outside your body so your nervous system can breathe.
The act doesn’t erase the pain; it simply gives it form, a boundary, a place to exist outside of you.
Prayer is the ultimate container. But sometimes our hearts need a physical act to match the spiritual one—something our hands can do while our hearts let go.
For years after Reggie’s death, I stopped journaling—just stopped. It wasn’t until a therapist invited me back to the page that I realized I’d been carrying grief with nowhere to put it. That journal became my altar. Not to wallow, but to mark: “This is where I laid that down.”
The Israelites understood this. They built altars at significant moments—not because God needed the stones, but because they needed the marker. Sometimes your soul does, too.
Give your release somewhere to land.
The Sixth Mechanic: Let Your Body Participate
Here’s what no one tells you: grief doesn’t just live in your mind. It lives in your body—your clenched jaw, your tight shoulders, the breath you’ve been holding for months without realizing it. Releasing the pain involves your body and your beliefs.
Your body remembers what your mouth tried to move past. Learning how to release what this year took from you can’t stay mental or “just spiritual.” At some point, your body needs to do what your mind is still afraid to say.
That might look like unclenching your hands while you pray, rather than bracing. Breathing out—audibly—when you surrender, let the exhale carry something with it. Taking a slow walk and choosing a specific tree, corner, or bridge where you’ll leave the weight. Letting yourself cry without apologizing for the tears, letting them do the work your words can’t.
We are embodied souls. God made us that way. Your body has been holding all of this. So, don’t leave it out of the process. Let it help release it.
You don’t have to do all of these. Pick one. This week. Just one.
And if you still feel the ache tomorrow, it doesn’t mean your release “didn’t work.” It means your heart is catching up to what your spirit just agreed to.
Learning how to release what this year took from you will always feel incomplete if it stays in your beliefs but never touches your body.
Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is exhale.
Release Is a Spiritual Reorientation
Before you go, I want to leave you with this: release is not emotional detachment. It’s spiritual alignment—a reorientation of your whole self toward the God who holds what you can’t.
Release shifts your posture. From clenched to open. From self-protection to trust. From survival mode to partnership with God.
We were trained to hold everything together—our families, our churches, our communities, ourselves. Release asks us to let God hold us instead.
You may carry the scar. But you don't have to carry the weight. Share on XAnd release doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. It’s not amnesia. It’s not pretending this year didn’t cost you something real. Release is deciding that what was taken won’t take anything else—not your peace, not your future, not your capacity to hope again.
So, if you’ve been wondering how to release what this year took from you, here’s your answer: not by pretending it didn’t happen, not by performing strength you don’t have, but by turning your open hands toward the One who’s been waiting for you to stop carrying it alone.
This is where release becomes worship—holy work. Not the kind you perform on Sunday, but the kind you practice in the quiet—when you choose openness over fear, trust over control, surrender over striving.
Remember, you don’t have to do it perfectly—just faithfully.
