Crumbling: When Letting Go Leads You Higher

Crumbling isn't the same as falling apart. It is not chaos, and it is not collapse. It is more like letting go, but maybe a little messier.

The quiet undoing of all the things I thought I had to hold together.

Crumbling happens when your soul exhales after years of bracing. When strength gives way to surrender, and performance melts into presence.

It is when God invites you to stop striving, to stop patching yourself up with false identities and coping masks, and instead... to simply be held.

Crumbling does not look impressive.

But it is holy.

And I am in the middle of it. And honestly, I do not really know how to walk this season out.

As I sat with the Lord today, on the verge of tears, not really knowing, but somehow knowing what was going on, He told me I was in a Crumbling Season.

I feel safe in His arms.

I know He is holding me.

I know Him so intimately.

But still, I am being undone.

It is a vulnerable place, this untethering. Not from Him, but from myself. Or maybe from who I thought I was. Who I had built myself into to meet the expectations others placed on me, spoke over me, and the ones I unknowingly placed on myself.

And I know, deep down, I know this is a good thing, this season of crumbling.

But it is tender.

It is not quite fear… it is more like trembling. A holy trembling at what might emerge on the other side. The letting go. The learning to be okay with the mess that is being revealed. Not cleaning it up. Not hiding it. Just letting it be seen. Letting Him see it. Letting Him hold it. Letting myself be loved there.

Let me clarify something. The crumbling season is very different from the breaking season.

A breaking season is when circumstances press so hard you have no choice but to snap under the weight. It is loud. It is public. It is pain that erupts.

Crumbling is quieter.

Sacred.

It is not the crash of something being broken against its will. It is the slow, holy unravelling that happens when you finally say yes to letting Him hold what you cannot carry anymore.

It is an invitation to surrender. Not because you have run out of strength, but because you are finally willing to stop relying on it.

To allow all the places where you tried to manufacture your own kind of holiness to fall away. And for everything that was hiding behind it to come spilling out.

To see the mess. To sit with the heartbreak of what is underneath. And still trust that He has you. Still believe that He loves you, beyond words, beyond performance, beyond repair.

Because all of this, every crumble, every crack, every quiet unravelling, is the outworking of the Love of the Father within us. It is His love that begins to reorder us. His love that draws us closer. His love that calls us to let go. And it is that same love that will not leave us where it found us.

This is where He goes to work. Not on the polished parts. But on the places deeper than you even knew you could reach.

This is where you start to learn who He actually made you to be, as you step into the crumbling with Him, not away from Him.

And yes, it leaves a mess. Because when things crumble, they leave crumbs behind.

But even the crumbs can be holy.

Sometimes I look at the fragments on the floor, the pieces of who I thought I needed to be, and there is a part of me that wants to sweep them up, gather myself back together, and prove that I am still okay.

But He is not asking me to fix it. He is inviting me to feel it.

Because the crumbling does not mean I am not okay. It means He is doing something deep, something tangible in a place I never knew could be touched. A holy work in the depths of the unseen. A place only He can tread.

“Okay” does not look like it used to.

It is not composure for the sake of reputation. It is not the image of strength that keeps everything neat and predictable. It is not keeping the mess hidden.

Because this is not falling apart. I still know how to stand. I still lead, love, serve. But underneath all that, I am in a place of rawness with the Lord.

A sacred undoing. A letting go of control. A quiet willingness to be seen by Him, and maybe even seen by others, mid-process.

It is about learning to be okay with my own mess, not because the mess defines me, but because it does not.

This place of intimacy is deeply personal. Holy. And not linear.

Every day, it looks like letting go a little more. Surrendering new corners of my heart. Even the ones I did not know I had been managing. Even the ones where sin sat quietly, covered by self-discipline and strength.

And here is the thing. Sometimes that letting go reveals what we have worked so hard to keep hidden. Sometimes the very process of surrender exposes our humanity to others.

And that is where it gets costly.

Because there will be moments when people see your in-between. When the work is not finished yet, and the healing is still unfolding. When judgment comes before understanding.

But even there, especially there, He is teaching me to surrender to Him.

To let anything I built in my own strength crumble.

To let it fall exposed. And then, fall away.

Because holiness does not come through managing or maintaining. It comes only by His hand, by Him doing a deep, unseen work within us.

And maybe this is the mountain. Not just a season of unravelling, but a climb.

A Mountain of Trust.

Because the higher we go with Him, the thinner the air becomes. We can rely less on our own strength, and more on the One leading us. The One who has walked this path before. The Guide who knows every turn, every drop, every summit.

There are moments we pause, pitstops to acclimate, to catch our breath in this new environment of surrender. But love does not let us stay long. Because once you taste the Love of the Father, you cannot go back. You must go higher. You must come closer.

Because that love touches places in your heart you never knew were waiting to be met. Places that were reaching for Him all along, but did not know it was Him they were reaching for. Until He met you there.

I think of Elijah. Not burned out, but cracked open. Not hiding, but being held.

He was not cast aside in shame. He was drawn up the mountain for something deeper. Not into the fire, or the wind, or the earthquake, but into the whisper. Into the hush of God’s breath brushing against the rawness of his soul.

And I wonder.

What if this crumbling is the same? Not a detour.

Not failure, but transformation.

An invitation.

What if the unravelling is the stripping that happens as we ascend?

Because the closer we come to holy ground,

the less we can bring with us.

Self-sufficiency cannot climb this mountain. Neither can performance. Or reputation. Or noise.

All of it falls away. Not because we are falling apart, but because we are being drawn in.

This is not the place of fear. It is the place of fire and whisper. Of knowing Him more deeply than ever before. Of being redefined by Presence alone.

So if you find yourself here too, in the quiet undoing, in the tenderness of the climb, in the fragments of what no longer fits, take heart. You are not falling behind. You are being drawn deeper.

This is not the end of your strength, it is the beginning of your abiding.

Let Him whisper to you in the crumbling.

Let Him hold what you can no longer carry.