Let It Go

One of the challenging aspects of all our lives is the ability to let go or the grace to let go, especially when traumatic experiences with others may have shaken us to the core, to the point where we would prefer to hold on to those painful experiences. Letting go feels so defeatist and none of us want to feel defeated. We want to be victors, we want to win, we want to be sure that we came out on top.

Part of the reason it feels difficult to let go is we do not know how - does letting go mean forgetting what happened? Does letting go mean blocking our minds? Does letting go mean we have to pretend? Absolutely not. Letting go takes more than the above because the pain of trauma does not depart from us so easily.

I am sometimes confounded by the idea of degrees of pain. How do I distinguish between pain level 5 from 6 or 7 and 8 or 2 and 4? This is incredibly subjective, but it isn’t invalid. It is the same, I believe, with trauma or a traumatic experience. You and I may not be able to determine the level of pain of a particular trauma, nor can you and I determine the level of pain suffered by a job loss and another person who lost their home through fire. Both are equally devastating, but it takes a victim to help us understand what the level of pain is.

I lost my father when I was fourteen years old. It was such a traumatic experience for me because I had no clue how I was supposed to process the loss. I was old enough to know what it meant for someone to die, but I wasn’t old enough to understand the grief and the vacuum that was created in my life. I am still haunted by that experience because I didn’t actually grieve his passing, nor was I provided with a safe space in which to grieve. Did I even know, at that time, anything about grieving? No, I didn’t. All I had to do was to deal with the absence and move on.

I don’t think I would be far off in making the case that many are those who are still grieving the deaths of loved ones that occurred years and years ago. You have lived with the trauma and the grief. Like me, you are also holding on because you didn’t know how to grieve, nor were you provided with a safe space where you could freely grieve.

Beyond the pain and trauma of grief, there are so many other things that we hold on to. I hold on to a lot of things. I do forgive, but I don’t know how to let it go because the moment I see whoever or recall that incident, it feels like reliving the whole episode again. But I need to learn how to let go, and I don’t know how.

I was once having a conversation with a friend who's been estranged from their daughter for a very long time. This friend doesn’t have the daughter’s number but knows someone who may have it. This friend wants to reach out to the daughter but feels that any attempt to reach out might worsen the situation. My instant reaction was, "How worse can it get?" The situation is already worse, so how much worse can it get? I encouraged this friend to let go of any feelings of resentment and reach out.

During Lent, we are reminded of our own mortality and awakened to some of the profound truths of life. That life, as we know it and have it, is so fragile. Lent is one of the seasons that holds for me a stark reminder about the need to let go. But then again, I don’t know how. It is a burden that I carry with so much regret.

As I wrote this piece, I was reminded of Jesus's words: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Rest from the weariness of our individual loads is possible with the Savior.

Like many of you, I am burdened with carrying a load, in fact, multiple loads that I need to let go of. And I hear the Savior’s call; it is an invitation that resonates with our Lenten spiritual practice of letting go. Lent is also about letting go. It is about seeing the value in disengaging ourselves from those very things that have the capacity to hold us back and make us less productive. Lent is about the rest that is made possible because we heeded the call of the Savior to bring our weary souls to his feet.

When we heed the call of the Savior, we do so out of acceptance. That is, we accept that it is only he who can help us reconcile with our past trauma and pain and forgive. To forgive may not necessarily mean to forget, but I am sure it can be the pathway to our healing. 

In my sermon last Sunday, I said that we have three forms of grace: one, grace to ourselves, an acknowledgment that we may fail ourselves, and when we do, we should find the grace within ourselves to forgive ourselves. Two, grace to others - our ability to forgive ourselves makes it possible for us to forgive others because we can see ourselves in them. Third, grace from God - through God’s grace, God forgives us, not because of who we are but simply because of God's abundant grace.

Although I do not know how to let go, if I can find some grace in my pain or trauma, and if you can also find some grace in your pain or trauma, we can all begin the process of letting go - as difficult as it may sound.

One gift of Lent is the possibility it creates for us to let go. Don't hold on to it; whatever it is, let it go.



Manny+