Learning To Let Go
Lessons from fall
I don’t know how things look where you are right now, but here in the UK we are in the full throes of Autumn now.
The air is suddenly so crisp and cool, the mornings and evenings are growing dark, and green leaves are morphing into brown, reds and yellows everywhere I look. Fallen leaves are lining the ground all around in the streets where I live, with those that still remain, just barely clinging on…
I haven’t traditionally been an appreciater of Autumn, but this year I am leaning into it. In fact, I’m getting out into nature every single chance I get, because six months of working from home and social distancing has become so tedious and I need to experience goodness and beauty wherever I can find it.
What’s more, I’m also leaning into the lessons that this season has to teach me, because what’s happening in the physical season seems to match my spiritual season so well this year. And just like the trees all around me, I am learning to let go of what I wanted, in order to make space for new things to grow…
Learning to let go
Most of us like to feel that we are in control of our own lives, but 2020 has been a sharp reminder that sometimes we aren’t!
Whether it’s been interruptions to our working lives, our children’s education, our social plans, or our civic freedoms, I think 2020 will probably go down as the year that schooled us all in how to let go and to hold things more lightly.
I keep feeling like I shouldn’t really be too rattled by the unpredictability of this year. In fact after three years of infertility and loss, I should probably be an expert as coping with my lack of control - but I’m not. Most days I still feel like a total beginner.
The problem is that letting go of the things we had hoped for and learning to trust God fully with what will be instead can be really hard - especially when it comes to those things that we care about the most.
Whether that’s certain possessions that we own, the kind of home or lifestyle we’ve built, the people that we love, or the futures that we want, it can feel really hard to loosen and release our grip on these things, can’t it?
Yet unless we open up our hands up and begin to release our grip, how will we ever be able to receive what God wants to put into them?
Tightly clenched fists can’t hold anything new at all.
A beautiful exchange
I wonder, what do you need to let go of in order to fully grab hold of what God has for you right now? Is it fear or control? Is it worry or disappointment? Grief or unforgiveness? Is it a relationship, memory, outcome or plan?
Sometimes letting go can be painful because it leave us feeling empty-handed or over-exposed for a season just like the autumn branches slowly shedding all their leaves.
Yet every time I look out of my window right now I am reminded that I don’t need to fear this process.
I can be brave in letting go of those things that aren’t serving me well or bringing me any life, confident that as I do something new will bud up and grow in it’s place in time.
And nature itself is my constant reminder of this beautiful exchange.
Things that appear barren always become beautiful again. Things that are old are always made new. And things that have died always create space for new life.
It’s the way of all things, and there’s never been a year when this wasn’t so.