Letting Go

“I'm letting go, Of the life I planned for me, And my dreams, I'm losing control...It feels like I'm falling and that's what it's like to believe. So I'm letting go…”

I started to think about this as Fracesca Battistelli’s song came on the radio the other night. Then the song “Let it Go” played on spotify:

“You say let it go You say life is waiting for the one's who lose control You say You will be everything I need You say if I lose my life it's then I'll find my soul You say let it go…” (Tenth Avenue North). Ok, I can take a hint. 

 And then I realized that that’s one of the reasons I’ve been struggling this year. It’s one of the reasons that it feels like things are falling apart. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve felt like things in life aren’t happening correctly. And you know what? It’s supposed to be like that. I should be able to release my plans and dreams—however amazing or well-thought or precious they are to me—to God, all the time, every day, and often. It should feel like I’m falling, completely out of control. It is out of my control. Really, I can no more control my own steps than I can control what your second cousin’s neighbor’s calico cat thinks of the fish that was just brought into the house. OK, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it’s still obvious. In the big picture of life, it’s out of my control, entirely.

Letting go—such an ordinary thing. Letting go, though, is always harder than I think it’s going to be. I can easily tell people that I’m over something, that I’ve moved on, but to actually believe that is a completely different story. Despite what I say, despite my implications that everything’s “alright” (as if that term even has any meaning now), I’m really having a hard time letting go. First impressions, desires, schedules, intentions, people, life—why can’t they all turn out how I think they will?

“I’m letting go, of the life I planned for me, and my dreams…”

Gosh, but I like my dreams. I’m actually really, really partial to the plans I’ve made. Last week, as I was thinking about all this letting go, I had plans to go to class and eat food and hang out and do homework. This weekend, I made plans to venture on a ROAD TRIP (sorry, whenever I think those words, they’re in bold font) with friends. Those plans seemed pretty sound to me. Even abstract plans—jobs after college, marriage, children, etc., all eventually but perhaps not yet specific—are significant, ingrained somehow in my mind as definites.

This isn’t to say that I shouldn’t make any plans. Of course not. But I shouldn’t count on tomorrow going according to my desires, I shouldn’t expect people to act and think they way I’ve planned for them to, I shouldn’t take hours and weeks and years for granted.

I guess I didn’t realize how hard I’ve been holding onto things until I’ve been forced to let go. That pull I’ve kept constant on people and dreams cause disappointment and heartache and frustration. I have no right to have a pull, a say, a wish, on anything. Anything. While we think we’re free to follow our own path, doesn’t the real freedom come from letting go and handing over control, completely, to God?

And, naturally, the things in this life we hold most dear will be the hardest to release, to let go. But maybe they’re the most important to release, too? Shouldn’t our biggest dreams belong especially to God? If they’re good dreams, if they’re part of God’s will for us, we’ll get them back. And dreams endorsed by God will be that much more incredible.

Let it go—impressions, expectations, dreams, goals. In some ways, I even have to let go of incredibly specific things, like personality. Of course I think of myself a certain way, I picture myself a particular person created from a combination of the intricacies of my thoughts, emotions, and dreams. But isn’t God very capable of changing my person, my personality, towards His original intention for me?  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” God’s plans for us, for me, are bigger, they are better, they are and have been since the beginning of time while my own have no right to exist at all. And God’s plan are eternal, not the petty, temporary ones I had in mind.

Hindsight shows me how insignificant my “plans” are in the grand scheme of things. Hasn’t God already shown that His will is so, so much better than mine? History, current events, and personal experience all scream of the stupidity of clinging to personal plans in place of God’s magnificent plans.

While “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), we’remeant to change. I mean, when I became a believer, I for sure changed. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). As a believer still, I do want to continue to change. So I have to let go of things—mistakes and regrets and first impressions and “what if”s. Yesterday didn’t go precisely as I had planned, so I’m letting go of the expectations I had. Tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll have to do the same.

So I’ve got to let go.  

It’s a process—a necessary, not-often-fun-times process. But I’m working on it.