Let it go, experience freedom

More than a few times in any given day, and myriad times over a lifetime, we find ourselves drawn into concerns that are beyond our control.  Succumbing to anxiety is the lot of the human life.  But the situation is not hopeless.

Even the experience of feeling crushed
can bring the gift of perspective.  

Nobody wants to be crushed with grief,
but suffering sorts some anxieties from others. 

The chief blessing I experienced in the tyranny of languishing, lasting grief twenty years ago was the entrapment of gratitude that I had for the things that could never be taken away from me.

Over these for which I had command there was real freedom.  The list seemed endless when I dug deeper down.

Spiritual blessings.  I was alive.  I had the love of my kids, my parents, new friends that came into my orbit.  Fire breathed into my faith, for God had captivated my heart in the dread of loss.  A newfound discovery, the love of service.  The power in overcoming addiction to alcohol.  None of these were little things.  

The more I surrendered
the material things I could lay hold of,
the more spiritual blessings
flooded into my perception.  

All of what I was experiencing — yes, the joy — came amid much sorrow and fear for the calamity that my life had become overnight.  I had lost my wife, my home, free access to my children, all joy in a job that required me to travel but alas a career that demanded I be away from my kids.  I had to let go of that life and centralise my efforts and focus.  Then freedom rushed in.

Materially, I had lost incalculably.  Every one of these single losses in and of themselves was enough to floor me.  Even as they piled on top of one another, I was forced to look for higher ground.

That season felt like I had lost everything
that meant anything to me,
but of course there was much
that was only then beginning to come in.

That season I learned what I had control over — what I thought, said and did.  

That’s it.  That’s all.  

Everything else I was forced to let go of, and in that season the gift of letting go was granted to me.  (I’ve had many seasons since where letting go seemed the hardest thing to do.)

Ultimately, we let go for freedom, but letting go must be done in faith, for it never feels like the right thing to do.  

But as we let go, we receive something intangible that we could never have otherwise.

Letting go redeems the reward that the
truer possessions cannot be taken from us.

The truer possessions cannot be taken from us
because they are not of this world.

Loss is the invitation to the spiritual.