The Gentle Art of Letting Go…

It’s not something you want to do, to say goodbye for now to a long-standing friend, distant family, or an acquaintance over the years. Relationships of value are hard to find and tough to maintain. Yet go, sometimes, they must.

Not all problems are able to be solved. Not all advice is taken. Not all fervent prayers are immediately answered. There’s a point where the puzzle is no longer able to be solved. Sometimes the pathology is too strong. Sometimes, for now, the bad guys win.

This isn’t a trivial thing. People toss each other aside for frothy reasons these days. When the magic is gone, or the utility of the other wanes or age takes its toll. But sometimes it must be done.

Along the way and in a moment of deep pondering, you realize that I, too, will drown if I continue to attempt a rescue and that I’m not immune from burns no matter how much I wish to fight the fires. Where is the “Wonderworking power?” you may think. “Where is my faith?” “Should I not hang on just a little bit longer?” Yet deep in your heart you know that everything that can be done has been done and there is nothing left then to release your grip so you can live to love and care and hope for another day, so you, too, can recover.

Somewhere over the loud screams of guilt there’s a still, small, voice that tells you, even amongst the questions, that your release of the other is not into the void but into the hands of God. God can do what I no longer can. God can accomplish at precisely the point where my own strength has dropped off the charts. I let go of the one I can no longer grasp but in their leaving they may be beyond my weariness but not beyond God’s grace.

And then, into that deep pool of mercy I release the other so that both of us, as we fall into it, can be saved.