Soulful Sunday: Letting Go

This morning I preached to myself by accident. Dash was whingeing about Daddy putting him in time-out, and blaming me for the fact that he ended up there. (Apparently if I had been quicker to get his shorts for him he would have been been outside playing, so wouldn't have been inside getting in trouble.)

I heard myself saying to him: You know, you can't just go around blaming everybody else for what happens to you...

And literally felt my words turn around and bite me. Ooooh they cut me deep.

Suddenly through my mind rushed a list of things and people I was blaming: my church for making the music too loud; the kids for stressing me out; the specialist for being unsympathetic and not giving me answer I wanted...

There I was, wallowing in ugly self-pity, negative and defensive. Yuck!

With this at the back of my mind we rushed out the door to church. Today we were starting the new plan: drop the kids off at their programmes; I go to Starbucks until the music is over (thereby avoiding any hideous panic attacks) and hubby txts me when it's safe to come on down.

I had intended to take my journal with me, but in the rush to leave it was forgotten.

With the kids dropped off I was heading out the door of the church when someone called my name, and a girl ran up to me and handed me a book, tied up with a ribbon.

It was Bill Johnson's new book, "Face to Face with God."

A coincidence? I think not. The book was from our pastor for me and Rory. Talk about freaky timing. I walked up the road to Starbucks, ordered my coffee and sat down with a sense that God has me right where he wants me. He wants me to stop fighting my seemingly frustrating circumstances. He wants me to let go my blaming, my negativity, my self-pity. Let it go. Drop it.

That's all He wants for now. Just let it go and see what happens.

As I started to read, I was reminded of a couple of things.

1. The Caterpillar/Butterfly. There's a struggle but I just have to let go of that caterpillar skin. Stop fighting the process.

2. Eustace's un-Dragoning (from Voyage of the DawnTreader by CS Lewis).

If you don't know the story, mean old Eustace gets turned into a Dragon, starts to regret the nasty little person he was, but is trapped inside his dragonny self. One night he wakes up and Aslan is there. Aslan takes him to a Well which will restore him to a boy if he can jump in - but first he has to undress, i.e. scratch away his dragon skin. He scratches and scratches, revealing layer after layer of dragon-ness. Eventually he turns to Aslan for help. The Lion pierces deep into the dragon-skin with his claws and rips it away. It hurts. But Eustace trusts himself to Aslan and becomes a boy again. A better boy than he ever was before.

This story spoke to me profoundly, years ago. Try as I might to peel away the layers of my "issues" it seemed there was always more; I could never get to the end of it.

The secret lay in trusting myself over to "Aslan", let him cut me deep. Of course, here I am, many dragonny layers later; still quite dragonny; still trying to do it myself.

And so then God whispers in my heart this morning, "Let it go."

Stop trying to fix myself myself. It aint going to happen!! Can't be done! If I coulda done it myself, I woulda by now!

Stop holding onto anger and frustration and self-pity. If I'm going to work on something, work on letting go.

So, my friends, here's where the rubber meets the road. From now on, Sunday morning I take my book to Starbucks. I have a peaceful coffee with God and read. The book is just for Sunday. During the week I can mull it over, re-read stuff, draw/journal/blog about what comes up. That's it.

Oh, and of course: Let Go.