Letting Go…

To every thing there is a season…

Holding on…

The Holy Spirit gives us breath.  (If you are not a Christian, you probably believe that we have a divine spark in us that keeps us alive.)  Months before we knew that Jan’s cancer had returned to her lung, I heard this song while riding.  It is about holding on.  If you love someone you want to hold them, physically, mentally and spiritually.  Then there come the time when we must let go.  That very moment is etched deeply into my memory.  Each of us, who loved Jan, had to let go so the suffering and pain would stop.  I wept when I said that she was going to be with the Lord.  When her breath left her as she went to be with God, I still wanted to hold her…

Letting go is difficult and painfull…

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, …”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 KJV

Scripture tells of Martha and Mary struggling to let go…

George McDonald wrote about how hard it was for Martha and Mary to ‘believe’ Jesus that their brother was in a better place with His Father: “Lazarus had to die again, and thanked God, we may be sure, for the glad fact. Did his sisters, supposing them again left behind him in the world, make the same lamentations over him as the former time he went? If they did, if they fell again into that passion of grief, lamenting and moaning and refusing to be comforted, what would you say of them? I imagine something to this effect: ‘It was most unworthy of them to be no better for such a favour shown them. It was to behave like the naughtiest of faithless children. Did they not know that he was not lost?—that he was with the Master, who had himself seemed lost for a few days, but came again? He was no more lost now than the time he went before! Could they not trust that he who brought him back once would take care they should have him for ever at last!’ Would you not speak after some such fashion? Would you not remember that he who is the shepherd of the sheep will see that the sheep that love one another shall have their own again, in whatever different pastures they may feed for a time? Would it not be hard to persuade you that they ever did so behave? They must have felt that he was but ‘gone for a minute … from this room into the next;’ and that, however they might miss him, it would be a shame not to be patient when they knew there was nothing to fear. It was all right with him, and would soon be all right with them also!”

McDonald continues: “’You mean that if your husband, your son, your father, your brother, your lover, had been taken from you once and given to you again, you would not, when the time came that he must go once more, dream of calling him a second time from the good heaven? You would not be cruel enough for that! You would not bemoan or lament! You would not make the heart of the Lord sad with your hopeless tears! Ah, how little you know yourself!…’If it was, it is worthless indeed—as worthless as your behaviour would make it. But you are dull of heart, as were Martha and Mary. Do you not see that he is as continually restoring as taking away—that every bereavement is a restoration—that when you are weeping with void arms, others, who love as well as you, are clasping in ecstasy of reunion?’” Ooh how flawed we are!

This morning Fr. Lito helped me with this grief experience…Reminding me that this is a natural part of the process. The wound is deep because of the depth of our Love. Reminding me that God is Love (see the post ‘God is Love’). It is not right or wrong. It just is…So let it BE…

Holding Jan’s memory in my heart is an eternal act of LOVE…

DKS