“Let go and let God” is saying I’ve heard frequently from people in recovery. It’s one of those slogans, like “one day at a time” or “easy does it”, that are a kind of shorthand for a more complex idea. They have a ring of truth about them, these slogans; they seem like common sense advice, solutions that many addicts agree can be applied to any number of the problems that commonly crop up in recovery.

But I’ve always struggled with “let go and let God.” It’s a difficult idea for an agnostic like me to wrap my head around, and my residual bad feelings about the patriarchal God of my youth render the thought of leaving anything up to Him deeply unappealing.

The simplest, most literal interpretation of “let go and let God” would mean to cease worrying, to give over control of a situation and trust that whichever deity you believe in will handle the problem. But I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in any kind of coordinated oversight of human affairs, I don’t believe that there’s any being or spirit or force or energy out there looking over me, protecting or guiding me. My higher power is nature, because when I am outdoors in the forest or even the park, I feel most connected to my own inner spirit, but I don’t feel that I can turn over my problems to the trees and the ocean.

So I’ve struggled with this advice in the past. Someone would say I should let go and let God, and I would hear “I can’t think of an answer to your problem, so you should just shut up about it already.” If I was in a more generous mood, I would be able to recognize that inside a certain belief system, this is advice that makes sense – and then I would just ignore it.

Recently, I was talking to my mom (who is a lady of great faith) about some problems I’ve been living with. Things that seem intractable, insurmountable at times: the pain in my body, depression, the fatigue of thyroid disease, the struggle of being poor and in school. She commiserated with me, and she told me – for about the thousandth time – that when her problems are overwhelming, she usually prays and gives the problems over to God, and that things usually work out in the end.

I naturally ignored this and went about my worrying, freaking out and obsessing about everything. My anxiety level was really getting up there, but my subconscious mind must have been turning over my mom’s advice, looking for a way to make it useful for me, because I had a flash of insight as I was waiting for the water to heat for my tea.

For me, turning a problem over to God, or letting go and letting God, simply means I need to relax and keep an open mind, so that I can see the possible solutions to whatever problem I’m dealing with. It means realizing that based on probability, the outcome of the situation will most likely be either positive or benign, and that if a true tragedy is in store for me there’s little I can do about it anyway. It means realizing that worry and anxiety just waste energy, and trusting that even if I can’t see an answer to my problem right now, that my circumstances are constantly changing and I may see one tomorrow. And it means having some faith in the wiser part of my mind – the part that doesn’t think it’s in control of everything all the time – the part that silently works out meanings and solutions as I go about my day.

I know this interpretaion won’t work for everyone, and that’s ok. I’m just glad to find that I’m slowly moving on from wholesale rejection of any mention of God in recovery, and starting to look deeper into the meaning of things, finding a way they can work for me. Already I can feel the wheels turning, wondering what other wisdom will open up and become accessible to me. I’m not worrying about it though.