A Pilgrimage into Letting Go: Helping Parents and Pastors Embrace the Uncontrollable

Andrew and Kara K. Root
Brazos Press, 230 pages
Published September 9, 2025

Remember the old TV show, “Get Smart?” Secret agents Maxwell Smart and the ever-capable but unnamed 99 work for C.O.N.T.R.O.L., locked in an endless battle against the existential terror of C.H.A.O.S. It was a funny show that revealed a deeper truth about our need for control.

As parents and pastors, we often believe our job is to control, avoiding chaos at all costs; A Pilgrimage into Letting Go invites us into a truer story. Andrew and Kara K. Root challenge us to loosen our death grip on this pervasive need, so that we might discover a more trusting and faithful relationship with the Living God who will not be managed or contained.

The Roots invite us to accompany them and their two young-adult children, Owen and Maisy, on a week-long pilgrimage through Scotland and northern England along the way of St. Cuthbert, a 7th-century monk who embraced prayer, service and ambiguity. As the Roots’ struggle to let go of the need to secure outcomes in their parenting and ministries, they name the reality of uncontrollability — pieces of life we cannot plan, predict or manage, especially our mortality.

The Roots challenge modern “snowplow parenting” and parents’ tendency to clear the entire path before their children, rather than prepare them to navigate the road ahead. Similarly, they challenge a model of contemporary pastoral leadership that is excessively managerial, based on corporate strategies that value growth in attendance and money instead of deeper discipleship. Control in parenting and pastoring is a false promise that suffocates and blinds us to the surprising work of God.

Control in parenting and pastoring is a false promise that suffocates and blinds us to the surprising work of God.

Drawing on sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World, the Roots contrast our craving for control with resonance — the capacity to be fully present, engaged, responsive and open to transformation. Resonance is connection. It cannot be engineered. It happens when we let go of control and attend to God and others. For parents, resonance happens when we listen to our children and do not dictate. For pastors, resonance happens when we walk with people in their suffering without offering easy answers.

Andrew Root’s rich theological reflection propels the narrative, continuing his theme of waiting for the God who is God to reveal Godself, and trusting God to work in uncontrollable places. This will be familiar to readers of his other books; however, this one stands on its own and provides new readers with an excellent introduction to Root’s theology. Minister Kara K. Root adds her pastoral voice, offering or selecting prayers to accompany the journey. One of the most moving is for her children. She asks God simply: “Give me the courage to watch and wait, to trust that you are holding them when I cannot.”

Resonance is connection. It cannot be engineered. It happens when we let go of control and attend to God and others.

The Roots pilgrimage along the way of St. Cuthbert is a living parable, filled with holy moments of resonance as they slow down and receive what could not have been orchestrated. Letting go is not passive or weak; it is an intentional act of trusting the uncontrollable God, who cannot be domesticated; the uncontrollable Son, who defied every expectation; and the unpredictable Spirit, who blows at will.