The One Who Saved Me: From Striving to Surrender

Mar 5

4 min read

By Alison Jacaruso

For a long time, my life looked successful from the outside but inside, I was exhausted.

I had followed every path that promised healing. I worked hard, achieved goals, and did my best to hold everything together. Yet beneath the surface, my body was tense, my mind was restless, and my soul felt disconnected from peace.

I didn’t know how to stop striving even in my faith.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t broken.

I was living in survival.

That season ultimately brought me to a quiet, honest moment of surrender, one where I finally stopped trying to fix myself and simply cried out to God. Not with polished words or certainty, but with humility and need. That moment became the beginning of everything changing.

It’s also the reason I wrote The One Who Saved Me.

When Healing Becomes Striving

Many women today are tired, not just physically, but deeply tired in their bodies and souls. I know if you are reading this, most likely you are too. Whether you are aware of it or not. If you are here, maybe you love God, yet still feel overwhelmed, anxious, or disconnected from rest. You have tried to heal through effort, information, or self improvement, hoping that if we just do enough, peace will come.

I know this because I lived it.

What I didn’t understand then is that healing doesn’t begin with control, it begins with surrender. And peace isn’t something we achieve; it’s something we receive.

The One Who Saved Me was written for the woman who has tried everything in the healing space and still feels weary. For the one who believes in God but struggles to feel safe, settled, or whole. It’s for those longing to experience not just faith in their minds, but restoration in their hearts and bodies.

His Breath and Nervous System Restoration

My book The One Who Saved Me is about how I surrendered my life and eventually fully to Christ and how something unexpected began to happen as I did. My body started to soften. My breath slowed. My nervous system, long stuck in fight-or-flight, began to experience safety again.

This became the foundation of what I now teach as His Breath.

Through the Holy Spirit led breath awareness, prayer, and scripture, His Breath invites the presence of God into the very places where stress, fear, and survival have been stored. It’s not a technique or formula, it’s a posture of surrender. A way of allowing God to restore peace at the level where we’ve been holding everything together.

Jesus doesn’t just save our souls; He restores our whole being.

This understanding reshaped my faith and my life. And it became central to the message of my book.

A Testimony, Not a How-To

The One Who Saved Me is not a self-help book. Let me say that now. There’s 1000’s of those out there and I’ve probably read and bought half of them if not more. The Holy Spirit told me testimony over teaching, and less of me, and more of His presence. This book doesn’t offer steps to master or methods to perfect. Instead, it shares a testimony of coming home to the truth, to rest, to peace and to a relationship with Jesus.

Through personal story, scripture, and reflection, the book gently invites readers to release striving and rediscover their identity in Christ. It speaks honestly about burnout, false peace, and the pressure to perform, while pointing consistently back to the One who brings us lasting freedom.

Jesus meets us not at the finish line, but at the breaking point.

And when we surrender, He does what only He can do with so much grace for us.

Why This Message Matters Now

We are living in a time where many women feel the weight of doing it all. Faith, family, purpose, healing, and it can feel like too much to carry. But the invitation of Christ has never changed:

“Come to Me… and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

The One Who Saved Me exists to remind readers that rest is not earned. Healing is not forced. And peace is not fragile when it comes from God.

This book is an invitation to pause, to breathe, and to return to the presence of the One who saves, restores, and holds us steady.

Coming Home

As my book releases this March, my prayer for you is simple: that every reader who encounters this story feels less alone and more anchored in hope and knows there's One person that can truly help you, bring you peace and ultimately save you.