On the 3rd Day of MissMas I gave to Me the gift of…Letting Go.
Letting Go can be hard. Whether it’s a situation that we find it difficult to move on from, a hurt or a pain that was caused by someone else, or letting go of a relationship, romantic or otherwise. We have become masters of justifying giving just one more chance. We often will fight tooth and nail to not let go of something that is no longer serving us because it’s comfortable, (spoiler: this will be one of our days). We as women, sometimes are creatures of habits and we will continue in a well-worn path simply because it’s the way that it’s always been.
Why is letting go hard? Because sometimes it feels like we are giving up when we let go. Like we failed, even if the very thing that we are holding on to is actually failing us. To let go means we have to admit that something is dead, over, beyond repair – that we couldn’t fix it. And that hearts more than actually letting go, admitting that we couldn’t make it work no matter how hard we tried.
We have to understand that many things in our life come for a reason, a season and/or a time. We end up causing ourselves and others more pain than necessary when we allow something in our life to stay longer than its expiration date. Trying to force something into a lifetime role when it was only meant to be present for a season makes almost as much sense as wearing a winter jacket in Texas heat. You will pass out, literally in the heat and emotionally from the baggage. We must take personal inventory of our personal, spiritual, vocational, physical and emotional relationships periodically and do a bit of a self check.
Is this still serving me? Does this add to my life? Is it subtracting from my purpose? Am I still attached to ‘it’ or just the idea of it?
If you are like me, there are so many things that I held on to simply because the idea of being without it was more painful than truly evaluating the value it was no longer adding. I remember when I was struggling to let go of a particularly bad relationship I had a God-sent friend that asked me, ‘Vonnie are you fighting so hard for it because it’s what you still want, or are you just fighting for it because you’re afraid of going through the pain of letting it go?’ That hit me hard. I didn’t still want to be with him, truth be told-I barely liked him, but I just dreaded the idea of being alone again and having to start all over. So I was willing to sacrifice more time, energy and emotions on a relationship that still ended. Don’t do that to yourself, sis.
Take a deep breath. Have a funeral. Bury it. Burn it. Throw it away. Write a letter to them telling them all the things you wish you could have said. Sit an empty chair in the middle of the room, imagine them there and yell, scream, cry…get it all out. Block the number. Delete the messages. Whatever you need to do to get to your freedom, be willing to do it. You need room for the enlarged territory that God wants to give you.
Say it with me… Today… I let it go…