Letting Go.

One of the most foundational pieces of my walk with the Lord has been the art of learning to let go.

Growing up I learned to sink into my emotions until they consumed me and left my mind wandering in dark places without a light in sight. The darkness tends to try and follow me into the everyday of life. I would love to tell you the darkness left when I first accepted Christ, but admittedly it is hard to let go of things that once brought me a form of comfort. My mind easily will accept the darkness and continue down the road of grasping and clinging than to risk losing control and letting go of that person, thing, or idea that I desire. I have convinced myself many of times that maybe if I think about it hard enough then maybe I can piece the pages back together and prevent them from falling apart. Exhausting myself to tears as I grasp for every piece of the story only to be left with an unending shredding of pages.

Letting go is difficult. Especially when it involves someone you love or a dream you have always envisioned. Letting go feels awfully like giving up. It feels like you are saying this person I have loved for so long is not worth it anymore or you feel shame at time wasted on a seemingly pointless vision. Letting go feels like the destruction of hope; is not it so that “hope deferred makes the heart sick…” (Proverbs 13:12).

A gift from God is found in the realization that some people and some dreams are worth letting go of. Not because the person or idea is bad or good, but because my grip was suffocating to myself and to them. My grip was suffocating to myself because I looked at every mistake I had made and dwelled on the fact that I could not trust myself or the Lord's hand at work. My grip was suffocating to a friend because I taught them, they could not trust themselves and that they were not capable of more.

So yes, people and things are worth letting go. Worthy to learn to trust themselves, to learn to love themselves, to learn to let the Lord wrap them up in grace and love. Worthy to have a chance to prove to themselves that they can have a life worth living and being a part of. Worthy to watch the Lord redeem and rebuild what once seemed lost and broken.

I am thankful for every moment someone let me go or a dream slipped me by because it helped me sit with myself long enough until God came to rescue me.

I remember this when I am amid heavy rain, and it becomes hard to see. As the drops hit hard and can make it feel impossible to arrive at any destination; I am learning that I have two options. I can stop and wait for the storm to move past, or I can keep going clenching the steering wheel, chancing that I might crash.

That is life, and it is messy. We hurt one another, we make mistakes, we sin. We are all guilty of it. Guilty of crashing the car as we tried to navigate with a hopeful heart of arriving somewhere calm and safe. Only to wind up in a ditch dazed and confused at the foreseen, yet still shocking, impact.

In times of heavy rain, it is okay to slow down and to stop. It is okay to even step out of the car and wait somewhere safe and dry as the storm clears up.

It does not mean you gave up. It does not mean you do not love that person. It does not mean the rain will not eventually stop. It just means that right now, in this time, the wisest thing to do is to stop, let go, and wait and see what the Lord will do next.

“…but desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

You do not have to fight for what the Lord has promised because spoiler, there is always a rainbow at the end of every storm.