I may be the least qualified person in our community to write an article on letting go and letting God. When I think of losses I’ve suffered, I don’t remember ever giving those things up easily. I only let go after doing everything I knew to hold on. My losses are pried from my hands, not let go. As for “letting God,” while I am a person of faith and have been for much of my life, I am also a person of control. Why “let God” when I have the ability to do it myself? Don’t I know what I need? Didn’t God give me the intelligence to figure my way through my own problems? I don’t think I’m alone in this. Our society celebrates self-sufficiency. We love stories of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, overcoming difficulty and pain and making it on their own. We may passingly credit God, but we celebrate the individual effort.
So, what am I to do with this idea of letting go and letting God? I’ve suffered losses, big and small. In every case, my response was to try to hang on and fix the situations myself. If God was involved, it was a begging prayer not an honest willingness to trust. But as I look back, I realize that despite my efforts at control and unwillingness to give things to God, God has been there anyway.
When I gave up my freedom and ability to make many choices for myself and lived in fear of where I would be or what would happen, God showed me Jeremiah 29:5-7. It told me to flourish wherever I was and quit believing that God was limited to a particular place or situation. After my divorce, I was drawn to a new marriage to a person who continues to teach me about unconditional love. Lost family, friends, and relationships gave way to new, often unlikely, friends and the discovery of a family of choice that loves and nurtures me.
During my recent illness, I’ve discovered a new awareness and empathy for others who are suffering. Rather than focusing exclusively on myself, I realize that there are dozens of people in our community who need my prayer and support. Hundreds of people in our area undergo medical treatments and millions in our world face sickness and death daily.
I may not like letting go and letting God, but I realize that without God, I’d be nowhere. God has led me, taught me, shown me, and kept me in ways that I have often failed to see until much later (if at all). In order for me to see God’s actions, though, it requires that I finally let go and recognize that I need help. I can’t fix everything myself. I must let go. I must let God.