For bestselling novelist Diane Les Becquets, surrender began outside an operating room, when she opened her hands and discovered a peace she could not explain.
Her husband had noticed something about Diane that she hadn't fully recognized herself.
Her fists were almost always clenched.
Even while riding in the car, her hands remained tightly closed. When her husband pointed it out, she brushed it off, telling him she was simply cold.
But looking back, she understands that those clenched fists reflected something deeper. For years, she had been holding tightly to her plans, her fears, her regrets and the belief that if she worked hard enough, she could somehow keep everything from falling apart.
Then doctors discovered five brain aneurysms.
And outside an operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, with her life hanging in the balance, Les Becquets experienced something she says she will never forget.
Her hands opened.
And for the first time in years, she felt free.
Hear more of Diane Les Becquets’ inspiring journey of faith and surrender in her full conversation with K-LOVE’s Crystal Thornton on the God Stories podcast below.
She Faced Five Brain Aneurysms. Then She Learned To Say "Okay" To God.
When Faith Becomes a Struggle
"Faith meant work," Les Becquets shares.
Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, with a Catholic grandmother on one side of her family and a Southern Baptist grandmother on the other, Les Becquets grew up believing in God. She was baptized in the third grade and says she has always loved Him.
But believing in God and trusting Him had become two very different things.
"I was striving in every single thing I did," she recalled.
Whether writing a novel, caring for someone she loved or managing the responsibilities of everyday life, Les Becquets constantly pushed herself to do more and be better.
Even her prayers carried the weight of those expectations.
She pleaded with God for direction, forgiveness and certainty, believing that if she tried hard enough, she might finally experience the freedom she longed for.
"I was a walking apology for every mistake I'd ever made in my life," she said.
What she hadn't fully recognized was how much fear had been shaping her decisions.
A Diagnosis That Changed Everything
In 2023, Les Becquets was working on her novel, Where the Water Meets the Sky, inspired by her father's family and the rugged beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
She had also been experiencing hearing difficulties and persistent, severe headaches that wouldn't respond to treatment.
Her doctor ordered testing.
One day, just before leaving home for a workout, she checked her patient portal.
The results identified a brain aneurysm.
For Les Becquets, the discovery brought back a painful memory. A few years earlier, her best friend and mentor had died after an aneurysm ruptured.
Further testing revealed four additional aneurysms, bringing the total to five. Two were showing signs of deterioration, while three others were rare blister aneurysms.
"I was afraid to sneeze. I was afraid to do anything," she recalled.
After researching surgical options, she connected with Dr. Raphael Tamargo, a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, whose expertise offered hope for an exceptionally complicated operation.
But the surgery was postponed twice after Tamargo became ill.
As the days passed, Les Becquets did what came naturally.
She kept pushing.
Determined to finish her novel before surgery, she worried that her father might never read the book she had written in his honor. She wanted to preserve cherished memories for her three sons, fearing that some of those moments might otherwise be lost.
And she worried about the house.
She remembers telling her husband they needed to clean the stove and finish other chores because, if she died, she didn't want people arriving for her funeral to find the house dirty.
There was something almost humorous about the thought, but beneath it was a frightened woman trying desperately to leave nothing unfinished.
Even facing brain surgery, she was still trying to control what she could.
The Moment Her Hands Opened
When the day of surgery finally arrived, Les Becquets' middle son, Seth, was there to support her. Her husband would remain at the hospital during the day, while Seth planned to stay at night and communicate with the rest of the family.
Her other two sons joined them by FaceTime before she was taken away.
Then came the goodbye.
Les Becquets remembers looking into Seth's blue eyes and struggling to release his hand.
All the courage she had tried so hard to maintain suddenly seemed to disappear.
She was wheeled toward the operating room, where medical professionals were preparing for surgery. Beyond the glass doors, people moved between machines and equipment.
And there she was, waiting.
The night before, two women she loved, both of whom had experienced the loss of a child, had sent messages encouraging her to be strong.
As she remembered their words, something shifted.
"I just felt this peace come over me and I was not alone. I was not alone. I felt God's presence with me."
The woman who had spent years carrying the weight of everything she couldn't control suddenly felt that burden lifting.
"And my hands opened and it was literally not just as if small rocks fell, it was like boulders just dropped from my body, from my hands, from my chest, from my shoulders."
Her hands had opened to release what she could no longer carry, and to receive the peace she had spent years searching for.
Nothing about her medical circumstances had changed.
The risks were still there. She still didn't know whether she would see her family again.
But something within her was different.
"God's presence held me," she told Thornton.
She described feeling safe, comforted and completely accepted, even as the activity of the operating room continued around her.
When the anesthesiologist checked on her, he seemed surprised by how calm she was.
She assured him that she was.
Then a nurse asked about her favorite song.
Les Becquets chose Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," a song filled with memories of raising her sons in Colorado, dancing around the kitchen and, years later, sharing a dance with her oldest son at his wedding.
In a room filled with medical equipment and uncertainty, her thoughts turned to the people and moments she loved.
"I Can See"
The surgery lasted approximately seven hours.
Les Becquets said Tamargo successfully clipped the two aneurysms behind her right eye and treated the remaining three with techniques intended to reinforce the weakened blood vessel walls.
When she regained consciousness, she remembers her surgeon walking into the room, smiling.
She smiled back.
"I can see," she told him.
Her vision was intact, something that had been a concern before surgery.
But those three words meant something else to her, too.
She was beginning to see the life she had been living, and the life she wanted to live, in an entirely different way.
The three blister aneurysms remain and require continued medical monitoring. She knows that part of her future is uncertain.
But she no longer approaches each day as though she must somehow solve tomorrow before she can enjoy today.
The Gift of Paying Attention
After her recovery, Les Becquets began noticing things she had overlooked.
She realized how often she and her husband moved through ordinary conversations without really looking at each other. So she began making eye contact, listening more carefully and giving people her full attention.
"When someone was speaking, I stopped thinking about what I was going to say," she explained. "I just listened. I just stopped."
She also found herself drawn more deeply to the beauty of creation.
She packed up her truck, brought her dog and traveled along the northern shores of Lake Superior and through Michigan's Upper Peninsula, exploring landscapes that had inspired her writing.
Eventually, she reached Point Detour, a remote stretch of shoreline she had tried unsuccessfully to visit before.
This time, the water had receded enough for her to make the journey.
Surrounded by the natural beauty she had imagined while writing her novel, she sat down on the beach and wept.
"I literally just sat down and wept to Jesus."
For years, she had asked God what He wanted her to accomplish, where her writing would lead and what promises He had for her future.
Now she believes she had been so busy searching for answers that she was overlooking the gift already before her.
"He's promising me life in this moment, life, and I was missing it."
For Les Becquets, that realization has changed everything from how she writes to how she spends time with the people she loves.
She still has dreams. She still writes. She still makes plans.
But she has learned to make room for something she once struggled to embrace: simply being present with God.
"The more I'm with God, I just trust that I will know what to do."
One Word. A Different Way to Live.
There are still three aneurysms in Les Becquets' brain.
She doesn't know what every future medical appointment will reveal. She cannot guarantee that life will unfold according to her plans.
Yet every morning, she wakes up grateful for another day.
"I'm still here. I still live with three brain aneurysms. They didn't rupture last night. Thank you."
Her experience brings to mind Philippians 4:6-7, where Scripture encourages believers to bring their concerns to God in prayer and speaks of His peace that surpasses all understanding.
For Les Becquets, that peace didn't arrive after every uncertainty had been resolved.
It came while she was facing them.
And for someone who has just received a frightening diagnosis, experienced an unexpected loss or found themselves facing an uncertain tomorrow, she offers encouragement from her own experience.
"I think we have to ask God to help us surrender. I think it's not something we can do on our own."
She encourages others to seek God, spend time in His Word and ask those who love them to pray alongside them.
Her journey has taught her that surrender isn't necessarily a single decision made in a moment of crisis. It is something she continues to practice in the ordinary moments of everyday life.
Sometimes that means stopping long enough to truly listen to someone she loves.
Sometimes it means stepping outside to appreciate the beauty of creation.
And sometimes it means opening her hands, remembering the peace she experienced outside that operating room.
For a woman who once believed she needed to hold everything together, her response to Jesus has become remarkably simple.
"Okay."