What Is This Costing You?

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Every year around my birthday, I start collecting my thoughts. I don't always sit down and write them right away, but I start gathering them in my head, what I'm feeling, what I've learned, what I'm ready to release, and more than anything, what I actually want to carry into the next year of my life.

This year felt different. I had all these thoughts floating around, and then something happened, and it felt like the whole mental file got deleted. I didn't want to look back and find another lesson or relive the year I just barely survived. I just wanted it to be done.

So the morning of my birthday, I sat down with my journal, and before I even understood what it meant, I wrote: I am releasing the emotional stress and weight of last year. I only wanted to bring love, happiness, peace, and freedom into this next year of my life. And then I wrote, surrender my day to His will, His way. I had no idea what was coming.

Later that same day, life threw me a curveball I did not see coming. And after the initial shock wore off, I felt lighter, and a huge sigh of relief came over me. A conversation gave way to what I think my spirit already knew.

It was time to let go of the assignment.

That sentence stayed with me. Let go of the assignment.

As I was processing all that just happened, I had to sit with what that even meant, because it can't mean abandoning responsibility or walking away just because something feels hard.

I'm talking about those moments when something was yours for a season. Even though temporary, somewhere along the way, you start confusing the assignment with alignment, and your identity starts paying the price.

You start thinking that the things you had or the places you were needed in meant you had to keep proving yourself. And just because it meant something, you take on the weight of the obligation, role, responsibility, or expectation as your own, and you carry it as part of who you are, your identity, that one yes has to become a permanent yes.

But here's what I kept coming back to.

What is this costing me?

Sometimes the thing that's costing you peace is also giving you something you think you need... structure, certainty, stability. Something to hold onto when control feels uncertain. And while maybe it served a purpose for a time, it helped you survive a season, gave you somewhere to anchor when life felt heavy, and everything around you felt like quicksand.

But something can serve a purpose and still be over. Something can help you survive and still not be yours to keep carrying.

That one is hard for me because when you've spent so much of your life proving your worth through output and performance, and by fixing what's broken or not working the way you want or need it to, an ending doesn't feel like an ending. It feels like a verdict. Like a reflection of your self-worth. Did I fail, or miss something? Where did I go wrong?

But I don't think that was the question God was asking me. I think it was much simpler than that.

Am I still willing to pay the price just to prove my worth?

So, today, I want to flip the script and ask you the same questions I had to ask myself.

What is this actually costing me? Not what it's giving you, but what it's taking from you. Be honest, remember, the truth will set you free.

Is this still mine to carry, or am I holding onto it because I don't know who I'd be without it? That question will give you pause at first. It did to me.

Am I calling this responsibility when it's really fear? Fear of what the ending might say about you, of starting over, of being seen as the woman who couldn't make it work.

Scripture for the Soul

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." — Proverbs 3:5
​ "We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps." — Proverbs 16:9

I know we hear those verses all the time, but they hit different when you actually do not understand, when the steps don't look like the plan.

So that's what I'm sitting with this week. God, is this still mine to carry? And if it's not, give me the courage to release it.

Points to Ponder

• What are you still carrying that stopped being yours to hold a while ago?
• If relief showed up the moment you considered ending something, what has that relief been trying to tell you?
• What will it cost you a year from now if you keep pretending you didn't already know the answer?

Remember, that question, what is this costing me, doesn't stay answered on its own. The truth is yours to seek and own. And I know you've had this conversation with yourself before, somewhere between the recognition and the next thing on your list, it fades, and you go back to carrying on with what you already knew wasn't yours.

That's why The Becoming… Identity Planner & Journal is where that stops: for the woman who is done performing her worth. It's where you write the truth down before you talk yourself back into the performance, where you reclaim who you're actually becoming in this season, rather than who you keep trying to prove you still are.

Start there.

And if you want to continue the conversation, I'll walk you through the whole story in this week's episode of The Confident Woman Podcast, E382: How to Know When God Is Asking You to Let Go.

So, tell me. What's something you're still holding on to that helped you survive a season, but you're starting to think is no longer yours to keep carrying?

XO,

P.S. Not sure yet what you're even carrying? Take the Becoming Quiz first. Already know you're ready to go all the way in? Becoming The Confident Woman is here.

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