Courage for the Unknown Season by Jan Silvious

Author:Jan Silvious [Silvious, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth, RELIGION / Christian Life / Women's Issues
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2017-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

LETTING GO

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

HERMANN HESSE

WHEN UNEXPECTED and unwanted changes come into your world, it usually means you will be required to let go, to release your grip, to accept what has happened. Yet in your heart, you may have a need to hold tight, to hang on. Your greatest longing is probably for the unwanted change not to be permanent. You may have a wistful hope of returning to the way things were, and that hope may linger even after irreversible change has occurred.

And yet those changes still do come in the most painful and profound ways.

Your spouse becomes terminally ill in body or in mind. The eyes that once lit up when you came in the room are lifeless as they watch you come near his bed. Life as you once knew it is over.

Your child who couldn’t hug and kiss you enough when she was a little girl is now estranged as a young woman. The coldness in her eyes says, “Don’t come near me.” Your heart shrinks back. Where did she go?

You’ve been diagnosed with cancer and are facing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. You long to return to yesterday, to before you heard the diagnosis, but you can’t. You have to move forward to fight a fight you never asked for.

Your best friend moves away. She’s not moving back. You can’t hang on to the comfort of her being next door anymore. A stranger will live there now.

Your church is no longer a hymn-singing, dress-up-for-Sunday kind of sanctuary that you loved. It’s now a worship-song-singing, candles-and-sandals meeting place that doesn’t feel like home anymore. The hymnbooks are in the maintenance closet and the music is on the wall, and there’s no going back.

When change comes to the people and places you thought would never change, it’s normal to want to hang on. You’re not sure what you’re hanging on to, but the familiar gives you a sense of security. Somehow it feels as if you won’t have to let go if you try to keep hanging on. But usually when we have to let go, it’s because what we loved and found familiar just doesn’t exist anymore.

When the hard changes come, how can you affirm to yourself that you really did have another life? How can you believe that it was good and productive while also believing that the very different life you’re living today is just as good?

My friends Steve and Pam were a picture of letting go while hanging on. Pam had a lung disease that took her to the edge of death before she received a transplant. In an emergency flight to Cleveland Clinic, it was evident Pam probably would not make it. In fact, before Pam boarded the flight, the doctor told this long-married couple that they might want to say their good-byes in case she didn’t survive the flight. Amazingly, Pam made it to Cleveland, where she had the surgery.

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