Letting Go

​Recently, I had the great joy of watching our three oldest grandchildren for almost the entire day while their parents and baby sister were out of town. We had lots of fun, and I’m not sure who was more worn out at the end of the day, me or them, since we played and read and sang and danced and colored all day with little break. All of you reading this who are more experienced in this grandparent stage of life were right - it is wonderful! And to those of you coming behind, I can say that watching your grandchildren learn and grow is one of the most wondrous gifts in all of life. 

Late in the evening when the other three returned home, I enjoyed watching our newest granddaughter, who is just a few months old, curling up in her mom’s arms, trying to scrunch up into her little pre-born ball shape again. She snuggled in tight, her nose pressed against her mama’s shoulder, and tucked herself in. After a day out and about in the bright sunshine and noisy crowds, she was more than ready to turn in for the night. Everything about the way she was moving let us know she was longing for her old hangout again - that safe, quiet womb, where for a lovely season she had everything she needed and nothing that she didn’t. 

It was sweet to watch, but it set me thinking. Very few people in the world really love moving on to the next, new thing. Most of us like it right here, right now, with this just like I like it and that right where it ought to be. Letting go of something old and familiar is so difficult. 

Many years ago, our younger daughter was downright dismayed when, on her third birthday, her dad and I presented her and her sister with a brand new, handmade bunk bed. She’d been watching the construction for a couple of days, excitedly chatting with her dad and the friend who was helping him, enjoying watching the custom bunk bed complete with a ladder and a slide, take shape. But all the while she had no idea that this fabulous new bed meant that we were getting rid of her beloved crib! She mourned the loss of her crib for weeks. 

Though it was decades ago now, I still remember the last day of tenth grade, finishing up my final exam, and dreading the walk out of the building. I had planned to meet my best friend in the high school’s foyer, to say our final goodbye. My parents and our dog were in the parking lot waiting for me, the car loaded to the top, ready to begin the cross-country trip to our new home. I cried as I hugged my closest friend one last time, unable to imagine how turtleneck-wearing, New England me was going to fare amongst the California natives; unable to fathom how I would ever have friends, or a swim team, or a youth group as wonderful as the ones there and then. It felt like the end of the line, with the road ahead so foggy and dark - not navigable at all. 

There are so many junctures like this in life: from the expected and welcome things like a graduation, moving away to college or leaving home for the military, starting a new job, or getting married and starting a family; to the unexpected things like suddenly losing someone you love, a divorce, a miscarriage, losing a job, or receiving a terrible diagnosis. 

All of us know people who can’t quite move past the change, and it is often sad to see. From the middle-aged person who cries despondently over the glory days of high school, to the divorcé who can’t seem to move past the loss, to the person who still spews bitterness at a past lost job or opportunity, it is actually difficult to watch someone get stuck. But it isn’t at all hard to imagine ending up there. Change and loss can be quite painful and even traumatic for all of us. Each new crossroad in life is certainly a stretch, and often a grueling exercise in learning to not just survive the change, but to find a way to thrive in it. 

 ​Henri Nouwen, in his excellent book Turn My Mourning into Dancing, offers great insight: 

These changes, expected and unexpected, “usher into our lives ‘small deaths.’ They remind us that fear and love are born at the same time. Both are never entirely separated in our existence. But as we come into contact with these little deaths, we meet life. They allow us to learn to let go. They prepare us to discover a life different from what we have known before.”

I have found this to be true, haven’t you? My daughter long ago stopped wishing for her crib, or even that great bunk bed, and now she and her husband have a wonderful king-sized bed in their home. Though I still treasure my childhood friends and memories, I’ve learned to thank God for that painful cross-country move, which eventually put me in the right place at the right time to meet both my Savior and my husband in college. Experiences like this help us to know that change, even if terribly painful at the time, can lead to something more than could have been imagined, be it a relationship, or experience, or purpose, or insight. These life changes all serve to further God’s work in our hearts and lives, shaping us to be the men and women He created us to be. They teach us and refine us, help us to trust God and to follow Him, and ultimately can serve to conform us into the image of Jesus. 

A friend of ours is trudging through another round of chemotherapy this week. He is handling the pain and weariness so admirably, and encourages us with his heart of gratitude to God for a long, full life. We pray for his healing, and for many more years of life! Still, he is coming nearer to the door that we all wonder about, the greatest and most unknown change of all. Letting go of this life is both a certainty and a mystery for each of us. And, whether we are conscious of it or not, most of us spend a lot of time and energy in avoiding this door, even fearing it. 

In our youth-obsessed culture, in which too many are trying to hold back aging and seeking to perpetually defy death in so many ways, it is wise for every follower of Christ to remember what our faith has to say about this last, great change of death. God calls us to a relationship with Him that will last forever; the here-and-now is not all there is to life at all! The Apostle Paul reminded us that to live is Christ and to die is gain, as departing and actually being with Christ is by far better than anything any of us have yet known. The psalmist declared, "How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God...better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere." Jesus told Nicodemus, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him."
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Jesus gave His own life so that we could believe in Him and really live, now and forever, and He asks us to trust Him with our hearts and lives. We don't need to fear change in life, each one of which better prepares us for the greatest change to come. 

So many voices from the great Cloud of Witnesses challenge us in learning to let go, and in taking courage as we move towards the ultimate change...
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From Elisabeth Elliot - 

“There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of – if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory.” 

To Dietrich Bonhoeffer -

"No one has yet believed in God and in the kingdom of God...no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence...Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death."


To ​Nouwen again - 

“Because of such convictions we can can face dying with more than dread or avoidance. We can learn to live well all the more because we do not insist on ignoring what we cannot predict. Learning how to die has something to do with living each day in full awareness that we are children of God, whose love is stronger than death. And as we learn to do so, we find ourselves, in small ways at first, beginning not to cling to what we have, not in panic trying to reserve the safe place we can clamp on to in the here and now. We admit we don’t know what the next day will hold, what our loved ones will say or do next, what God may be about in the year ahead. But this does not dispirit us because we also remind ourselves that we never will find out if we do not open our choices to the risk.”



What changes are you facing in life? What cherished and precious people or things or seasons are you leaving behind? Be encouraged today - God won't leave or forsake you, and He will bring depth and wisdom to your life through this season of letting go, as you trust Him. Fix your eyes afresh on the author and perfecter of your faith, and let Him do a deep work in your heart and life.

​May the Lord bless and keep you, and make His face shine upon you, and may He give you great courage this week to face every change that life brings your way.