Letting Go

Not too long ago I read a book by Esther de Waal entitled, "The White Stone."  It was not a book about rock collecting, but one about letting go of relationships, things, and accumulated stuff.  After fourteen years of having cows graze in the pasture and birth calves, I decided to let them go.  I sold them to a neighbor who is a cattle farmer.  While I enjoyed having them on the farm, I also knew it was time.  Processing the moment has set me to doing something I do too often: thinking.   

As much as we hate to let go of the people whom we love and the things we value, life is from the very beginning about letting go.  We let go of the security of the womb to be born.  We let go of being adolescents to become adults.  We let go of being single and free to do whatever for the sake of love in marriage.  To reflect for a moment is to see an endless list trailing along behind us.  Normally it is not something we think about; but, as we move into the older years, the process of letting go becomes more accelerated and visible.  Old age gives us the perspective of seeing that what has been invisible to our conscious mind is now suddenly very visible.   

It is not just in our older years that we engage letting go.  We actually have been doing it all our lives.  Letting go is something which those who love God and trust in Him understand to some degree in their spiritual lives.  Jesus was always clear that following Him was costly.  There were things about life which had to be let go.  Letting go is something we do from beginning to end.  For all of us, there is ahead of us that day of letting go of everything including breath itself.  What is true in that final moment has been true all along the journey.  When we let go, we are enabled to go forward.  In that final act of letting go, we will be moving forward toward our Home with the Creator who set us forth on the journey.  Such is our faith.  Such is our hope.  Such is the promise of the One who first called us to let go and come after Him.