Let It Go

This week, I have been listening to a song called "Let It Go". Not THAT "Let It Go", but the one by Tenth Avenue North. I keep listening to this song and some others like it because I’m hoping to get some kind of consistency in my response to them. Sometimes I get excited at the prospect of surrender, but then the song is over and then I go back to normal. Other times I say, “Yes, I will do that, just as soon as you tell me when I’m gonna get it all back”. Other times I just get sad and start feeling sorry for myself. But all of this has really gotten me thinking about just how much of my life and my happiness have been poisoned by expectations that are now in conflict with reality.

I know I’m not the only one. I know that most people have a formula for how things are supposed to work out There are presupposed blue-prints starting from very early on depicting how our lives will go and what we will want. From what I remember of being a little girl, they start thinking very early about the man they might one day marry, what he will look like and how he will act, the house they will live in, the job they will have. They practice with little baby dolls that are even designed to cry and poop (inaccurately, I find). I don’t know anyone who grew up thinking “I hope I get thrown a curve ball. I hope something unexpected comes along to challenge what I always thought I would do and what I would have. I want all the things I want to get taken away or never show up. I want to do something weird and risky that will make people think I’m nuts”, Okay, I know some people who wanted that last one. But the point is, we all want things, conventional or not. We all have expectations and desires. Sometimes those desires are for things that are not good for us. We all imagine things going a certain way or one of many ways. Still, we don’t have every possibility considered. However, God does, and at any time, he could call us out of our plan and into his, and it’s scary when he does that.

For the people who have nothing to hold onto, nothing that they cherish or would leave behind, it’s great. But I don’t know anyone like that. Plans, whether they have come into being or not, are comforting. We make them because we like the way they look. We buy things because we want them. We hang out with people because we like them. We chase our dreams because making our dreams come true is what every little kid is instructed to do at some point by someone. Then God says “Leave your home and go to the land that I have shown to you”. Then he says, “Sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor”. He comes to you on the Damaskas Road. He takes you out of your very well stable job collecting taxes to follow him around the county. He tells you to climb out of the boat and try walking on water. These are the moments we don’t plan for, but God does.

Sometimes we work for years to buy a house and then it burns down. Sometimes we try all our lives to find someone to love, and then loose them. Sometimes we train to get that job and never get it. Sometimes we put on a front because the truth is too scary to face. Sometimes we look back on where we thought we would be and our hearts break because we so wanted things to be different. Why didn’t I get what I want? Why didn’t the plan work for me when it worked for them? What did I do wrong? And God says “Let It Go”.

Trust Me.

Don’t Be Afraid.

Lose your life and you will find it.

All of this just asks the question, what are we holding onto? What isn’t negotiable? What could we not let go of? At what point do we draw the line and say, “No, I need this.”?

My problem tends to be that even if I know that what I’m really saying is, “No, I need this more than you,” and I know that it’s the wrong answer. Still, it sometimes doesn’t matter. I have blatantly told God, “No, you can’t have that.” It usually has ended up with me later having to give it up anyway and wishing I had done it sooner. Still, he asks me for things and I’m reluctant. It’s still not easy to just obey when God says

Let go of your pride.

Let go of your fear.

Let go of what you want and what you hoped for.

Let go of this person.

Let go of your “security”.

Let go of how you feel about that.

It’s hard to believe that the things we hold on to hold onto us. It’s hard to see that the things we have or want aren’t the best we can do if God is telling us to abandon them for something else. He offers us LIFE in exchange for our “life”. He offers us freedom and joy in exchange for our boundaries for happiness.

The new rope probably isn’t as pretty. Maybe we have to take a fall and get hurt. Maybe we’ll have to go back to where we started. But God says we’ll find our life if we lose it. We lose the counterfeit that we can never and were never meant to have and get something real.

Let go of bitterness, start healing. Let go of expectations, see the blessings. Let go of the plan, wait for what’s supposed to happen instead. Let go of what you want it to look like, see the beauty in what it is.

God hasn’t promised me that things will be as pretty as I pictured, but he has said that I will find my life if I lose it. If I lose what I’m holding, I will have something that he says is better. That still doesn’t make it easy. Maybe nothing will make it easy because I’m still a person and I still want what I want when I want. But I don’t need easy, I just need enough and I think I have that.