***Archive: This post was published on a previous blog and transferred here.***
Letting Go” From The Grace Awakening by Chuck Swindoll
To let go doesn’t mean to stop caring,
It means I can’t do it for someone else.To let go doesn’t mean to cut myself off,
It’s the realization that I cannot control another.To let go is not to enable,
But to allow learning from natural consequences.To let go is to admit powerlessness
Which means the outcome is not in my handsTo let go is not to try to change or blame another,
I can only change myself.To let go is not to care for,
But to care about.To let go is not to fix,
But to be supportive.To let go is not to judge,
But to allow another to be a human being.To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
But to allow others to affect their own outcomes.To let go is not to be protective,
But to permit another to face reality.To let go is not to deny,
But to accept.To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,
But to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
But to take each day as it comes.To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,
But to try to become what I dream I can be.To let go is not to regret the past,
But to grow and live for the future.To let go is fear less
And love more.
This past week, 2 main concepts keep coming into my mind. Life does that, sometimes [Well, I’m not going to give life the credit, I’ll give it to the divine plan and the powers of the human mind], giving you a theme for the day. The two focuses of my life right now are letting go and agency. The two concepts are friends holding hands, really; walking side by side. Letting go is allowing others their agency, while reserving your own. It’s sorting through what you do have control over and what you don’t. All anyone really has control over can be summed up into 3 things: personal thoughts, personal feelings, and personal actions. Everything else is someone else’s control/agency.
I’ve been thinking about my daughter, and how she can ride a bike but wont let herself; and how she can swim, if she’d just trust the water. Letting go, to me, is like that. It’s realizing that the water is not your enemy, but your friend. It’s realizing that the bike works with you, not for you. Letting go is just…trusting. And not the “okay, world, I’m going to jump, you’d better catch me.” but, “Lord, I know that you see what I cannot, and I’m okay with that.” Letting go literally, physically, feels different. I had no idea! Letting go is a calming in every muscle, because when you are calm, the water lets you float. When you relax, the bike lets you balance. And when you let go… life does the same. I wish I knew how to spare the world of so much fear and negativity, because I see how hard it is to not let go (and quite frequently have to remind myself of the difference), but I never learned that skill. Instead, I ache for a world – for loved ones – and pray that someday, they can learn for themselves
to just let go.
