For the Things I Clutch Onto, Too Tightly

I love deeply. I love with passion. I love with every bone and fiber of my being. So when I love someone, I LOVE someone.

I love my God. I love my children. My husband. My relatives and friends. But there are times where God has to remind me that loving people, here, doesn’t mean I can compartmentalize them away from Him. For when I love them, I want to hold onto them. And sometimes God has different plans.

I love my Lord more than anything. Yet His lessons are still hard for me to grasp and accept at times. It’s hard to accept when He wants to take away someone in my life that I love dearly. It’s hard when He sees fit to move along a friendship or bring someone new into someone else’s life so that I am set aside. And yet, I trust Him. Even if I don’t like how events unfold.

I don’t think I have ever loved anyone more completely in this life than my family.  Once you become a wife and a mom – it’s a whole different ballgame. Your heart is no longer your own. Everything can become a threat, a fear, a danger. You throw your whole being into protecting your children, nurturing them, instilling values and morals into them – only to know that one day they will walk out your door.

It can be so easy to clutch onto them too tightly.

If letting go would only be easier. If it only would sound more inviting, and welcoming.  But it doesn’t. It sounds painful.

I am coming upon that time in life when God will ask me to let go of my children. To let Him take over. (As if He wasn’t always in charge, anyways!) As my children come into the age of being independent adults, my heart has to ready itself to break a little – or a lot. I have to unclench my hands and let God’s hands replace my own. The God I love more than anything. The God I trust.

I couldn’t let them go to anyone or anything else.

They are so priceless, my children. So irreplaceable. And it’s so scary to let them go. It’s scary to relinquish “say” and control. Because I love them. Deeply. I enjoy them. And I always want them near. They are lifeblood to me.

Someday, I know they will have children of their own. And they, too, will feel that deep, deep love. And they will understand. They will know my heart.

But for now, I have to ready myself. I have to prepare. I have to understand that this season of my life is changing and shifting.

I think when I think of “letting go” I envision a person on a cliff holding the hand of someone who is about to fall. That’s why it’s so scary. I feel like I have to hang on for things to be all right.  But what if I instead, envision someone releasing a bird in the sky? That bird is free to fly. To soar. That is the kind of ‘letting go’ that I think a parent really does. And it may be one with tear-soaked cheeks, but it’s one with a smile. A dream. Hope.

My hands may never fully be ready to open up and let God take those I love so dearly out of my grasp. But ready or not, I will do it. I will hand over my heart to the Lord I love more than life itself and watch Him carefully tend to the sweetness He graciously brought me all those years ago.

My children.