It''s All Possible

When was the last time you caught yourself trying to control everything—your family, your work, your schedule, even your spiritual life? In It’s All Under Control, Jennifer Dukes Lee invites you to loosen your white-knuckled grip and entrust your carefully managed plans to God. Through vivid storytelling and spiritual insights, she dismantles the illusion that control equals safety and shows how faith, rest, and surrender bring real peace.

Lee argues that most women trying to manage it all aren’t power-hungry—they simply love deeply. Their tendency to over-plan, over-serve, and overachieve grows from care, not arrogance. But the cost of a control-driven life is high: anxiety, exhaustion, and distance from the very people we’re trying to care for. Her message is simple and freeing—God never asked us to hold everything together. He invites us to partner with Him, to release what isn’t ours, and to trust that the One who holds the universe can handle our outcomes.

The Invitation to Surrender

The book begins with a vivid image: a woman stranded on the side of a road, out of gas, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Jesus walks up the dusty path with an invitation in his hand—“You are cordially invited to embrace a new way of living. Help is here.” Lee uses this story to represent how many of us drive our lives on fumes, powered by determination rather than grace. She argues that surrender isn’t weakness. It’s willfully accepting and yielding to God’s plan, trusting that He knows what we can carry—and what needs to be released.

Lee dismantles the truism that faith means doing nothing. To surrender is not to quit life’s responsibilities or sit idly by; it’s to reorient your power and purpose. You continue to do the meaningful work God calls you to but release the illusion that you control the outcomes. Like Lee says, “You surrender outcomes, but you don’t surrender effort.” The goal is not laziness, but alignment—moving through life energized by trust instead of fear.

Cracking the Control Code

One of the central tools in Lee’s book is the concept of the “Control Code”—a pattern of habits and assumptions that dictate how we handle responsibility. She invites readers to “crack their code” by honestly evaluating stress patterns, motivations, and emotional fatigue. Her Control Code Continuum acts like a self-assessment scale, showing where you stand—from the Healthy Zone (focused, joyful, trust-filled) to the Danger Zone (burned out, irritable, hopeless). By naming our zone, we can take the first step toward recalibration.

This approach borrows from both spiritual disciplines and psychological insight, comparable to Brené Brown’s ideas about vulnerability and imperfection or Stephen Covey’s reflections on choice and responsibility. Lee combines Biblical truth with relatable modern-life scenarios to help you notice when your helpful drive becomes overdrive.

The Journey from Control to Peace

Throughout the book, Lee reveals that learning to trust God requires practice—not platitudes. She walks readers through real-life losses of control: from her husband’s farming struggles to her near-fatal car accident, from parenting her daughters behind the wheel for the first time to hearing “no” from God about her ambitions. In each case, releasing control invited a deeper kind of strength. “Letting go,” she says, “isn’t cowardly—it’s courageous.” She reframes surrender as a discipline of active trust: relying on a God you can’t see but whose love you can’t deny.

As the chapters progress, she gives practical frameworks—how to evaluate your commitments (“Do, Delegate, or Dismiss”), how to take God off your to-do list, how to wait when life stalls, and how to rest without guilt. Each chapter ends with a “Cracking the Control Code” exercise: a guided reflection designed to help you translate insights into lifestyle changes. By the final section, Lee’s message crystallizes—true peace grows not from securing control, but from trusting the One who holds it.

Why It Matters Now

Lee’s vision of trust offers a necessary antidote to a culture addicted to hustle and optimization. In a world of spreadsheets, wellness trackers, and five-year plans, she urges you to sit still before the God who holds tomorrow. The book is not simply self-help—it’s an invitation to transformation: to rediscover intimacy with Jesus, recalibrate your identity around His love rather than performance, and replace your fear with faith-fueled confidence. In doing so, you learn that the phrase “It’s all under control” finally tells the truth—not because you’re managing it, but because God is.

How did we get so desperate to manage every detail? In Chapter 2, Lee traces the roots of our need to control—not to selfishness, but to love. She tells the story of trudging across a snowy Iowa field to collect hay for a family Christmas project, falling into a snowdrift, and realizing the metaphor instantly: she had been stuck in her desire to make things perfect. Her overworking was born out of love for her family, but the outcome was exhaustion and self-frustration. That moment became a spiritual mirror—sometimes love morphs into control.

Good Intentions Gone Wrong

Lee’s primary insight is that control often starts with noble motives. Mothers, spouses, or leaders don’t control because they’re overbearing but because they fear failure, harm, or disappointment. She describes herself as a “dutiful protector,” managing every possibility like a helicopter parent on steroids. This over-functioning stems from the belief that if she keeps all the plates spinning, everyone will stay safe. But the “illusion of safety” only feeds anxiety. Lee compares this tendency to Eve’s decision in Genesis: reaching for the forbidden fruit not out of rebellion, but out of the desire for wisdom. Good intentions can still lead us astray.

She reminds readers of biblical and modern examples—Jonah running from his calling, Martha pacing the kitchen, or even parents who micromanage their grown children. Each case reveals the same fallacy: if I handle it, I can fix it. But control, she says, is a heavy idol that promises peace but delivers pressure.

Pride Masquerading as Love

Another layer to control is what Lee calls the “benevolent kind of pride.” We tell ourselves we’re just caring more, but underneath, we’re assuming God needs our managerial skills. “We think it’s all on us, but it’s on God,” she writes. What she came to understand—lying in that frozen field—is that protecting everyone was never her job. “We got here because of love,” she concludes, “but love must be surrendered to a higher love.” True care allows others to grow, even if it means watching them fail.

(In parallel, Brené Brown identifies a similar tension: how anxiety disguises itself as overcare, tightening connection until it strangles trust.) Lee’s compassion for high-achievers makes her counsel practical. Instead of judging control freaks, she treats them as women with “hearts too big” and boundaries too soft.

Reclaiming Perspective

Her antidote is humility and awareness: remembering that “I am not the Christ.” By releasing the savior complex, you can return Jesus to the center. Lee ends the chapter with small, grounded practices—pausing before you step in to fix, praying before saying yes, and acknowledging God’s ownership of outcomes. Like her drenched Christmas epiphany, awareness begins when you fall flat enough to look up. Only then can you discover that beneath your exhaustion is not failure, but love waiting to be reoriented toward trust.

In Chapter 3, “Awesome,” Lee examines the burnout that comes from hustling to be responsible, needed, and impressive. She tells a hilarious yet poignant story about a mammogram technician announcing, “You have very busy breasts.” That phrase becomes a metaphor for her entire life—overextended, overcommitted, overloaded. “Even my boobs are busy,” she quips. Through humor, she exposes the spiritual treadmill that turns high-achieving women into anxious ones.

The High Cost of Being Awesome

Growing up in a hardworking Iowa family, Lee learned diligence as a virtue. Her father’s agricultural career and her own journalistic drive made her a consummate achiever. When people praised her efficiency, she internalized activity as worth. Over time, she transformed her worth ethic into her worth. The workplace rewarded her, churches admired her, and even God, she assumed, must be impressed. But as her lists grew, so did her emptiness. She calls this “the pantry problem”—no matter how much space she cleared, she kept filling her life again. Busyness, she confesses, became her badge of holiness.

Her story echoes what psychologist Ann Burnett discovered in cultural research: even Christmas letters now boast of busyness as a badge of honor. Lee connects this to ministry life, where Christian leaders often burn out shepherding others toward peace they themselves never experience. “Seventy-five percent of them say busyness gets in the way of their relationship with God,” she notes.

From Proving to Trusting

The pivotal shift in Lee’s thinking comes through the apostle John’s self-description: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” John defined himself not by how much he loved Jesus, but by being loved by Him. Lee contrasts John’s identity with Peter’s—a man always proving himself through action. We, too, can become Peters: serving, signing up, baking the cookies, and measuring our sanctity through performance. But when identity flows from belovedness, not busyness, freedom returns. “The most important thing about you,” she writes, “is not how much you love God, but how much He loves you.”

Lee encourages readers to adopt that identity as their mantra: “I am the one Jesus keeps on loving.” It’s a disarming statement that quiets striving and anchors faith in grace. By recognizing that control issues are often identity issues, she transforms guilt into gratitude. Like Ann Voskamp’s teaching on “enoughness,” Lee calls for a deep exhale—a surrender of hurry to love.

Most self-help books stop at awareness. Lee goes further by offering concrete reordering. In Chapter 9, “Room,” she shares how a home-decorating exercise unexpectedly became a spiritual metaphor: “quiet the room.” Removing everything from her living room to identify what truly belonged taught her that her soul, too, was cluttered with good but excessive things. Some furniture was essential, some sentimental, but much was simply taking up space. Similarly, our lives need decluttering.

The Three-Pile Framework

Lee proposes the Do, Delegate, or Dismiss method as a life triage system. Like sorting decor into “keep, give away, toss,” you review every responsibility and place it in one of three piles:

• Do: tasks that align with your calling or bring joy.
• Delegate: assignments someone else can do (often better).
• Dismiss: commitments that drain you or violate your core boundaries.

She suggests using spiritual discernment, not guilt, to guide these choices. “You can’t control and connect at the same time,” she warns. Overcommitment, justified as service, blocks intimacy with God and people. By simplifying her calendar, she regained not laziness but presence.

The Courage to Say No

Dismissing isn’t selfish; it’s sacred. Lee acknowledges that the word “no” often feels like disappointment incarnate, especially for women shaped by duty. But she reminds us that Jesus disappointed people too—He left crowds unhealed, left towns unexplored, and declined to meet every expectation. To say no is to imitate divine boundaries. “A yes to one more thing,” she writes, “is a no to something else.” Your no may even become someone else’s yes.

By focusing on her essential self—the version aligned with her God-given purpose—Lee found genuine peace. The exercise mirrors lessons from Greg McKeown’s Essentialism and Lysa TerKeurst’s The Best Yes, but with pastoral tenderness. Simplifying isn’t about productivity hacks; it’s about creating room to hear God again. Only in a quieted space does divine direction reach a cluttered heart.

Lee devotes two pivotal chapters to the delicate balance between perseverance and release. Sometimes God calls us to grit our teeth and hang on; at other times, He asks us to release our grip. Knowing the difference is the skill of spiritual maturity. Through storytelling—from San Francisco cable cars to teenage driving lessons—Lee shows that both acts are holy when done at the right time.

When to Hang On

In “Hang On,” Lee redefines endurance as sacred strength. The popular phrase “Let go and let God,” she argues, can become an excuse to quit too early. True faith sometimes means gripping hard through the storm. She recalls her marriage’s “middle years,” when holding on through conflict and fatigue deepened love. Hanging on may look like continuing therapy, rebuilding trust, or working late to honor commitments. “Do not let your hands be weak,” she quotes from 2 Chronicles, echoing the farmer who told her during a snowstorm, “The harvest always comes.”

Learning to Let Go

In “Let Go,” she shifts perspective. Using the cable car metaphor, she explains that even gripmen must eventually release the lever—or risk destroying the cable. In life, letting go can mean abandoning your illusion of control, quitting toxic responsibilities, or entrusting your children to God. She candidly admits her biggest struggle: letting her teenage daughter drive. Through prayer and humor, she learns that helicoptering doesn’t prevent accidents—it prevents growth. “Sometimes the bravest thing a mother can do,” she writes, “is put down her phone.”

Both movements—hanging on and letting go—become acts of trust. The challenge is discernment. Lee offers tools like the “Decision Tree” to help readers ask guiding questions: Am I hanging on from faith or fear? Am I letting go from surrender or avoidance? Her conclusion bridges paradoxes: God’s grace empowers both perseverance and release. Knowing when to grip and when to release is how you stay securely held by Him.

In “Superpowers,” Lee recasts ambition as sacred partnership. Instead of shaming high-achievers, she honors their drive while urging rechanneling. Citing Jesus’ parable of the loaned money, she points out that the Master praised not the servant who buried his talent but the ones who invested it. God wants partners, not players pretending we’re Him. Our natural diligence and order are gifts to be stewarded, not suppressed.

Drivers, Devoters, and Darlings

Lee identifies three archetypes to explain how control manifests differently:

• Drivers thrive on goals and structure but risk burnout.
• Devoters overflow with care, often rescuing others instead of releasing them.
• Darlings crave perfection and external approval.

Each type possesses holy strengths and hazardous shadows. By recognizing their patterns, readers can shift from control to cooperation with God’s Spirit. Drivers can practice patience, Devoters can trust God with their loved ones, and Darlings can rest in their identity as beloved rather than impressive. Self-awareness, she argues, is part of sanctification: “You are not broken; you are being refined.”

Her tone is both humorous and kind, echoing Gretchen Rubin’s typologies in The Four Tendencies but rooted in Scripture. Lee’s taxonomy helps readers stop mislabeling personality as sin and start using their design for divine purposes. Your control tendency isn’t your curse—it’s your calling, once yielded to the right Master.

Lee dedicates her final chapters—“Wait,” “Whole,” and “Rest”—to cultivating stillness in a world that equates worth with productivity. These sections remind readers that waiting is not wasted time and rest is not laziness. “While we’re waiting,” she writes, “God is working.”

The Discipline of Waiting

In “Wait,” Lee calls waiting rooms sacred classrooms. Through hospital scenes with her family and the biblical story of the bleeding woman healed after twelve years, she shows that delays can deepen dependence. “Don’t push—pause,” she advises. In the quiet, God rearranges our hearts more than our circumstances. Waiting exposes our illusions of control and trains us to hear God’s whisper beneath the noise.

Wholeness and Rest

In “Whole,” written from a Cancún balcony, Lee recounts a moment during a massage when the therapist said, “Relax your body…your mind…and your soul.” Those words became revelation. She realized her life was fragmented by control—body pushing, mind racing, soul ignored. True rest, she concludes, comes from living as an undivided person (a concept echoed by Ann Voskamp’s “one-piece life”). Your body, mind, and soul were meant to operate as one under God’s breath. “We are not pixels; we are people,” she writes—a phrase that resonates in our digital, distracted age.

Finally, in “Rest,” she circles back to Jesus slipping away to pray while “everyone is looking for you.” We mirror His rhythm when we rest first, work second. Rest is not reward; it’s readiness. By learning to “abide before achieving,” we replace frantic control with holy pacing. The ultimate freedom isn’t the absence of duty; it’s the presence of peace.