Letting Go

It's so easy to accumulate head knowledge. After all the reading I've done in my (ahem) impressive 20 years of life, I've amassed a fair amount of it. And yet, especially when it comes to spiritual things, there is the inevitable--that moment (day, week, month, or even year) where God reaches into my comfortable pile of ideas, and begins to twist one into my personal experience. Sometimes painful. Sometimes sweet. Always deepening my trust in Him.

The lesson God's been twisting away at this week? Letting go. (Also known as surrender.)

"Letting go" is not really letting go when something means nothing to me. To truly let something go is to relinquish something precious.

Letting go is not pushing a dream into a vacuum and watching it float away. It is holding it out with open hands and saying, "God, I'm trusting You with this dream."

Letting go is not a once-off release. It's a continual choice to stand still and let God organize my circumstances.

Letting go not only means surrendering my dreams and desires, but also giving up my "right" to indulge in self-pity and anxiety because things aren't working out exactly as I planned. I love Eric Ludy's definition of self-pity:


Self-pity [self-pit-ee] -- the juicy and oddly satisfying feeling that you personally are the most unlucky, unfortunate, and uncared for human on planet Earth; the very clear sense that you personally are getting a raw deal in life and that the universe...is out to do you in.

Even a hint of that, especially with the intent of convincing others of my "unfortunateness," shouts out that I didn't really let go in the first place.

At it's core, letting go is simply a relinquishing of self. And yet it's one of the hardest things in the world to do. In fact, I may even go so far as to say it is THE hardest thing in the world to do.

Ironically, though, letting go of self is the only way to peace and rest. "It is the love of self that brings unrest" (The Desire of Ages, page 330). When I'm completely empty, there is finally enough room for God to come and fill me with His presence. And nothing, nothing self has ever offered can compare with the peace that God brings. It's like an "Ahhh" moment of the soul. Something like the sigh you give when you drop into a comfy chair, or lean into the warm arms of a loved one.

And sometimes… sometimes letting go is all God asks before He returns the dream to waiting, open hands. When you demonstrate that you can trust your dreams completely to God, you prove that God can trust you with them as well. Of course, it's not always the case. But sometimes God was the one who put the dream in your heart to begin with.