I Will Not Let Go Until I’m Changed
Wrestling in the Garden: How the Soil Reveals and Renames
By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project
Jacob didn’t end up wrestling with God by accident. He was on the road back to the one place he had avoided for over two decades—home. Long before that night by the river, Jacob had deceived his father, Isaac, and stolen his older brother Esau’s birthright and blessing. When Esau vowed to kill him, Jacob ran. He spent the next twenty years living far away in Haran, working for his uncle Laban, building a family, and growing wealthy. Outwardly, he succeeded. But inwardly, he remained unsettled, unresolved, and unnamed.
Then, God spoke.
“Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.”
— Genesis 31:3
Jacob obeyed—but he knew the road ahead would lead straight through Esau, the very person he betrayed. So he sent his livestock, his wives, his children—his whole household—ahead of him, trying to appease Esau with gifts. But when night fell, Jacob was alone. And that’s where the real wrestling began.
“And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.”
— Genesis 32:24
The word for “wrestled” in Hebrew means to grapple, to entwine, to stir up dust. This was no metaphor. It was a gritty, physical fight. Jacob, likely exhausted and overwhelmed, suddenly found himself locked in a struggle with a mysterious man who appeared out of nowhere. They wrestled all night long. No words, no context—just struggle.
At some point, the man—who was more than a man—touched Jacob’s hip and dislocated it with one move. Instantly, Jacob was wounded. But even then, he held on. And as the sky began to lighten, the man said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” Jacob’s response revealed what the fight was really about.
“I will not let You go unless You bless me.”
— Genesis 32:26
He wasn’t asking for wealth, safety, or provision. Jacob was asking to be changed. For the first time in his life, he wasn't scheming his way into a blessing—he was wrestling his way into surrender. Then came the divine question: “What is your name?” Not because God didn’t know, but because Jacob needed to speak it aloud. Jacob, meaning deceiver, heel-grabber, supplanter. And in that vulnerable moment, God responded not with condemnation, but with renaming.
“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,
for you have striven with God and with man, and have prevailed.”
— Genesis 32:28
Jacob walked away limping—but no longer running. He carried both a wound and a new name. A man changed, not by domination, but by encounter. Before Jacob could cross the threshold into his future, he had to wrestle with everything he carried from his past. And God met him there.
This is exactly what happens in the garden. Because just like the banks of the Jabbok River, the garden is a threshold place. And thresholds are sacred. In Scripture, thresholds are where God meets His people—Abram at the entrance of his tent, Moses at the burning bush, Ruth on the threshing floor, Elijah in the cave, and Jacob at the river. These aren’t just historical footnotes. They are spiritual markers—places where what was can no longer move forward, and what’s coming next demands stillness, presence, and surrender.
Thresholds are uncomfortable because they expose the in-between. They are not where you came from, and they are not yet where you’re going. In the garden, you are held in that tension. Not forced to move. Not pushed to perform. But invited to be present long enough to wrestle, grieve, listen, and let go. The garden is not a doorway to quick relief or cultural success. It doesn’t feed ambition. It exposes what we thought we needed and reveals what God has been trying to give us all along.
A threshold is not a doorway to external achievement—it’s a fire line, burning away what cannot pass through.
It’s not a place of striving—it’s a place of undoing. And in that undoing, something sacred can be rebuilt.
Many who come to the garden aren’t seeking transformation. They just show up, curious or tired. But the soil does something over time. It slows you down. It listens without speaking. It begins to stir up what’s beneath the surface. People arrive with their hands in the dirt and unexpectedly find themselves facing their own stories. Wrestling in the garden may not look like physical grappling, but it’s just as real. It might be a man staring blankly at a row of beans, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion he didn’t expect. It might be a woman who thought she came to weed, but instead begins weeping. It might be a teen who’s never heard silence this loud, realizing for the first time that something in them wants to change.
The soil is slow.
It doesn’t perform.
But it always tells the truth.
The garden reveals. It reflects. And it invites. Not to prove something, but to shed what’s false. To hear the Spirit. To receive a name that isn’t earned, but entrusted.
The limp Jacob carried wasn’t shame—it was evidence. It told a story: “I’ve been with God. He touched me. I’m not the same.” And the same is true for those who surrender in the soil. The wrestling is often invisible. The breakthrough rarely happens in one day. But if you stay in the garden, the renaming will come. Because the garden is not just where food grows. It’s where illusions die. It’s where old names fall off. It’s where God meets us, not to overpower, but to overhaul.
The garden doesn’t force this moment. It simply holds us long enough to reach it. And this is why the garden is not a one-time threshold. It is a continuous one—a living altar of returning. Every visit invites another layer of surrender. Every season tills something new. And every time we think we’ve laid it all down, the soil invites us to go deeper still.
The garden is not a place we pass through once. It’s a living invitation to ongoing transformation.
Letting go in the garden is not a sign of failure. It’s a response to God’s nearness. And when we finally release what we cannot fix, control, or carry—we don’t lose anything. We gain clarity. We receive peace. We receive presence. And when the letting go is real, we rise—not emptied, but renamed.
So if you’re in the garden and still holding on—don’t be ashamed. Just stay. Let the soil soften you. Let the silence ask its questions. Let the Holy Spirit do what only He can do. And when the time is right, you’ll know: it’s time to let go—not because you’re giving up, but because you’re finally safe enough to surrender.
And when you do, you won’t walk away the same. You’ll walk away marked by mercy, renamed by Love.
Not because the garden changed you, but because God met you there.
Some thresholds are more visible than others. On April 4, 2022, while using a log splitter, the tip of my left pointer finger was severed. But something happened that I still can’t fully explain. There was no panic. No pain. Only peace. It wasn’t a romanticized moment—it was a real one. I was doing something I love: splitting wood, preparing fire, clearing space. But under the surface, I was also wrestling—quietly questioning whether to go back to a steady 9–5, wondering if this work was really worth it, if this calling was real, or just another idealistic pursuit that would cost too much.
And in that wrestle, while the scent of green oak filled the air, while the log splitter hummed beneath my boots—God answered. Not with words, but with a mark. Not with drama, but with clarity.
He met me in the middle of my essence.
Not to break me, but to affirm me.
Not to wound me, but to seal something deeper.
I wasn’t chasing a sign. I was simply working in rhythm with God. Splitting wood has always been sacred to me. I’m a Leo by birth—lion-hearted, drawn to heat, built for fire. And that day, God didn’t bypass what I love. He amplified it. The loss of that fingertip wasn’t an interruption—it was a threshold. A divine line I could no longer cross the same way again. He didn’t tell me to stop leading. He just made sure that from now on, I’d lead with a mark of mercy, not momentum.
Like Jacob’s limp, this wound became evidence.
A sign that I could no longer lead the old way—
but that I would never lead alone again.
It was a moment of sonship, not punishment. A reminder that the Father refines His sons not through shame, but through invitation, surrender, and alignment. And now, every time I smell green oak or feel the hum of that machine, I remember—I didn’t walk away from that fire. I walked deeper into it.
Just like Jacob, I walked away with peace, not pain—
and with a name only God could give.
