Chandigarh, July 10: In the silence that often follows life’s loudest heartbreaks, a quieter truth begins to speak—of surrender, of letting go not as weakness, but as a kind of divine wisdom. For many navigating loss, longing, or love that cannot be fulfilled, surrender is no longer resignation. It becomes survival. And sometimes, a sacred form of trust.
“I no longer ask ‘why me’,” said Amna Qureshi*, a 32-year-old poet and former journalist in Chandigarh. “I’ve stopped fighting what I don’t understand. Maybe this is what it means to believe—really believe—that God writes every line of our fate with purpose, even when we cannot see the ink.”
Amna speaks from a deeply personal space. In 2021, she fell in love with a man she described as “gentle, broken, and mine in spirit, if not in reality.” That relationship never found a name. It also never found permanence. “He belonged elsewhere. He made his choices. I stayed back, with nothing to hold onto except what I felt,” she said.
Now, three years later, her eyes do not tremble when she speaks of him. Her voice does not rise. “I used to think surrender meant giving up. But surrendering to the will of God isn’t weakness. It’s a form of worship,” she said, seated on a bench at Rose Garden, the monsoon winds turning her dupatta into a quiet flag of survival.
Religious scholars echo this. “In Islam, there’s a concept called ‘Tawakkul’—complete reliance upon Allah after making every possible effort. When you’ve done your part, letting go is not giving up, it’s giving over—to divine will,” explained Maulana Zubair, an Islamic scholar based in Sector 44. “Real surrender comes when your heart stops questioning and starts trusting. That’s where peace lives.”
But this peace does not come easy.
“In the beginning, I cried like I was being split apart,” Amna admitted. “I begged, I prayed for him to return. I thought if I stayed patient, he’d see me again. But patience isn’t a transaction with God. It’s a test. And sometimes, the answer to your dua is silence.”
Psychologists, too, are witnessing a growing number of people—particularly women—coming to terms with emotional abandonment by reclaiming their pain through surrender. “Surrender has become a new form of healing,” said Dr. Reet Oberoi, a therapist who runs a women’s wellness circle in Panchkula. “It’s not about passivity. It’s about choosing peace over obsession. Understanding that closure doesn’t always come from others. Sometimes, it comes from above.”
For Amna, that closure wasn’t cinematic. It came in fragments—a rain-drenched morning, a song played by accident, a photograph she finally deleted. “There was no grand goodbye. Just a growing stillness inside me. That’s when I knew I’d surrendered—not to the man, but to God’s will.”
She still wears the silver ring she had bought for herself when they were in love. But now it’s no longer a symbol of waiting. “It’s my reminder that I chose love, even when it broke me. And I chose faith, even when it tested me.”
In this age of constant pursuit—of love, of validation, of control—surrender feels countercultural. But for those like Amna, it’s liberation. “People ask me why I didn’t fight harder. But not every war is yours to win. Some are written just so you can learn how to lay your weapons down.”
Not all surrenders are equal. Some come after years of holding on. Others bloom in an instant, like a sigh released from the depths of the chest. But all of them, she believes, are sacred in God’s eyes. “I don’t think He punishes us with pain,” she said softly. “He prepares us with it. He breaks us so we bend, so we kneel, so we return.”
Amna does not know what the future holds. She no longer imagines endings. “I live in the prayer, not the outcome,” she said. “And I trust now that whatever is mine cannot be taken. Whatever is not, no force can bring it to me.”
As the sun began to set behind the Sukhna Lake, her voice lowered to a whisper. “Maybe that’s the art of surrender,” she said. “Not losing hope, but placing it in God’s hands—and walking away with grace.”
