Let Go

     Someone once asked me, "What is your biggest fear."  

    My response was, "being alone."

    I am the youngest child in my imeadiate family.  I am the youngest grandchild on my mother's side.  I have no husband or children.  So, my greatest fear is a practical one.  What happens to me when everyone that I love is gone from this earth.  Sadly, that fear has directed parts of my life and lead me to a place of hurt and brokenness more than once.

    The past couple of weeks have been challenging for me.  My father was diagnosed with COVID in the  middle of January.  My mom was diagnosed one week later.  I spent my birthday alone and quiet.  My parents are doing well but they are still recovering.  They both have very little energy and have a hard time acomplishing daily chores that were simple only a month ago.  My sister and her family are in Hawaii and I can't remember the last time that I saw them.  Due to COVID and work I don't meet other people or see friends.  For the past three weeks my world, outside of work has been my cat Morris and me.  Well, Thursday after work I picked up my Morris and imeadiately called the veterinarian.  He has a growth.  We went to the vets yesterday and he most likely has cancer.  Step one, surgery.  Right now I can't look beyond step 1.

    So while my greatest fear has not yet come true I am feeling the accute affects of a solo life.  Then yesterday I read something that gave me a new perspective.  I was reading Hacker by Ted Decker.

"Sufferings not beautiful," I said.

"Necessary.  Without it, growth would be impossible.  There would be no opportunity for our hearts to unfold, to blossom, like they were meant to.  The only thing that truly crushes our hearts is our unwillingness to let go.  Let go of our need to control.  Let go of our need to know the answeres to our questions.  No amount of suffering is truly heavy enough to crush us completely unless we let it.  It only has the power that we give it."

"Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains a lone seed," she said.  "All things that live eventually become the soil in which new things can take root.  Things that would otherwise not exist."

    What does this mean to me?  How does it affect my life?  For so long I have held onto certain dreams and people.  I think it is time to let go.  To allow a death of sorts in my life.  When I let my dream of Russia die out of the soil grew an amazing life in teaching.  Letting die relationships and my need to control them allows my heart to open up again.  I did not realize that by holding on to a dream I was also holding on to my own suffering.  By letting go I give God the room to work in a new way.  It is time to let go, to let one life die in order for something yet unknown to grow.