Do You Have a Hard Time Letting Go?

Even nature knows letting go is hard to do. An autumn storm tore the top off a tree in my backyard. The leaves from living trees continued to drop in the weeks following the storm. Yet, the brown leaves of the fallen tree crown persist in hanging tight. Why is it so hard for this disconnected part of the tree to let go of the leaves?

I Need to Let God

My question birthed another question in my heart, “Why is it so hard to let go of some things?” You know what I mean. Sometimes we hold things so tightly that a rottweiler couldn’t pull them out of our hands. Other memories lurk in the shadows until the slightest ray of light brings them into the open, where they vie to control our thoughts. We know the things and people populating our history don’t have to dictate our destiny. But they resurface to release their stink once again.

I wondered why the leaves fell from living trees, but not from dead branches. In my simplified terms, the broken limb can’t choke off the veins that move water into the leaves and food into the tree. So, the dead leaves on the broken branches can’t let go. 

Just as trees go through seasons of life, we do too. My closet reveals the remnants of many seasons with clothes that fit when I weighed more or less. One of my grandchildren recently pulled out the catcher’s mitt I used as a Little Leaguer in another century. The baseball glove holds a memory. The clothes betray hopes and fears. And I haven’t mentioned the books resting in boxes, longing for a shelf to call home. Admittedly, I have trouble letting go of things. 

Letting Go Is Hard

Holding onto the familiar, painful though it may be, offers comfort venturing into the unknown cannot provide. However, the pictures living in our minds contain distortions, giving words and actions disproportionate meaning. Memory monkeys play unhealthy games with our subjective minds as we add and subtract to our painful versions of the unforgivable. In the process of forgiveness, we forgive others and ourselves. Sometimes we need either to release or redeem a situation. Still, as we identify what or who needs forgiveness, we cannot take the next step until we let go of what is bothering us. 

Healing invites us to describe what happened and recognize the meaning it holds. Not everything weighs the same to everyone. Values differ. Without diminishing reality, we want to unmask former troubles that continue to disturb us. We don’t want to make more of what hurt us than it was. Neither do we want to make less of that which seeks to hold power to label us. We call it what it is, but as Christians, our identity is in Christ. What scars us doesn’t define us. But faith does. 

We Have Choices to Make

Carl Jung said, “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.” No one lives a perfect life. All of us have scars from people and situations we have encountered. We can rise above our woundedness or allow our suffering to determine our lives. If we allow resentment to grow in us, the bitterness binds us to that person or situation with painful emotional links. We must make the choice about what we are going to allow to take up residence in our minds.

Then, we decline to allow our pain to confine us. Gandhi once said, ‘I refuse to let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet.’ But how do we escape those dirty footprints?

Simon Peter wrote, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” We can give our troubling people and situations to Jesus Christ in prayer. Whether verbal or written, these prayers are significant. Whichever approach we use, our words become a transaction in which we are giving our struggles to the one who has borne our pain. Simon Peter’s next words were, “Be self-controlled…” We can choose the focus of our thoughts. 

Please note, if we have had a problem letting go, the situation may come to mind again. If it does, we can acknowledge its presence, and once more, let it go. I’ve found that reminding myself I’ve already given this person or situation to Jesus frees me from the temptation to steal it back from him.