Thursday, May 30, 2013

Letting Go

Jenni, at Story of My Life, is sponsoring a Everyday in May Challenge, where she gives a writing prompt every day for bloggers to use on their blogs. While the idea of that is fun, I've been just reading the posts of others each day, enjoying what they've written, but not writing anything myself. 

Today's prompt struck a nerve. Today's prompt is "React to this term: Letting Go." And while I'm being completely open and a bit vulnerable here, I feel I need to share if for no other reason, but to be made accountable for actually doing what I'm saying I'll do. So here goes...

I'm a planner. I make a To Do List every single day. At this moment, I have today's list and I also have lists started for tomorrow, this weekend, next week, the summer, etc. I like to know what's going to happen and when. Don't get me wrong. I love surprises! I do. But I also like to plan some things...

I say all that to say, letting go is hard for me. 

What am I letting go of?
  • I'm letting go of the plan I'd made for my life. ...of the time frame of various things happening. I'm letting go of how I thought my life would turn out. 
But that's not all. I am also letting go of things I've been holding on to that I shouldn't.
  • I'm letting go of past hurts. 
  • I'm letting go of the regrets I have.
  • I'm letting go of the mistakes I've made (and learned from). I'm letting go of the hold they've had on my mind, making me feel like I couldn't move forward at times.
  • I'm letting go of the walls I've built around me.
I'm letting go of fears I've held onto for far too long, such as...
  • failing.
  • not living up to the calling God's placed on my life. 
  • goodbyes. I hate hate hate goodbyes. While they're an all too common part of my job, they're still hard. And I think I build up such an aversion to them that I become almost fearful or anxious about them.
And do you want to know what my absolute biggest fear is? Here's me being totally and completely vulnerable. My absolute biggest fear is...
  • never having the (future) family God's promised me. When God called me to the mission field, he didn't say that it'd be only me. No, God told me that I'd be one day working with my husband on the mission field. So while I know He's promised this to me, I honestly haven't trusted Him. Instead, I've always had the intense fear that I'd never get married and never have a family of my own. How awful is that?! This is God I'm talking about. God, the One who created me. He gave me life and I can't trust Him with one detail of it?! So I'm letting go of my distrust. I'm letting go of this (irrational) fear. 
And lastly...

I'm letting go of the intensity of independence I have. It's good to be independent. However, I think sometimes I'm a little too independent. I have always had a hard time accepting help from others. I've always wanted to just do something myself rather than have someone else help me with it. 

Moving to Africa helped me with that. I moved to a place where I couldn't drive, I couldn't speak the language that well, I couldn't do a lot of things. So I had to learn to depend on others. It forced me to trust others and accept their help. But I still have a ways to go. So I'm letting go and letting God help me with it.

So now I'm going to just take a deep breath and let it all go.


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