Letting Go

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Most parents face a bit of angst when it comes time to let a child go. The first really big “go” is off to college, a tough goodbye for most of us. But it helps to recognize we’ve been letting go in small ways during the 18 years leading up to that, each one a bit of training for the bigger go-moments.

The first is letting go of our babe-in-arms, encouraging him/her to grow into a toddler who prefers to walk. Little by little they go – to the church nursery, preschool, kindergarten, summer camp, and we find ourselves on the outside looking in. As time passes, they go farther and farther from us, the natural order of things. But they aren’t the only ones we have to let go of.

We also say goodbye to parents, mentors, friends, pastors and others. Each positive relationship that ends includes a negative go-moment. But the old expression, “When God closes a door, he opens a window,” is true. Again and again he shows us that letting go of one thing brings us to something new.

Two Ton BakerWhen I was a grade-schooler in the 1950’s, I loved a 350-pound TV personality who called himself Two-Ton Baker. We became friends through a tiny, round screen, because Two-Ton loved kids. Occasionally he’d have one on his show, and the child was always invited to grab a handful of candy from a giant glass jar. But a clenched fist of goodies could never fit back through the small opening, requiring him/her to let some of the candy go to pull out of the jar.

The same thing happens when we hold onto someone or something after it’s time to let go. Our loss seems greater the tighter we cling. By hanging on, we lose the chance for a positive send-off, which is like losing all the candy, not just a bit of it.

There are some go-moments, though, that just never go well: when they’re next to a casket. The slam of that closed door really hurts. A window may be opening, but we can’t see it through our tears.

Lonely JesusGod knows how difficult it is to let go. He let go of Jesus for 33 years after they’d been joined in a closeness we can’t comprehend. And Jesus let go of his Father while simultaneously imposing human limitations on himself. He also let go of royalty and riches to live in poverty. The reason? Love for us.

Letting go is always emotionally draining. For a Christian who lets go of a loved one through death, however, the emotional pain will one day abruptly end.  The separation is only temporary, just as it was for God the Father and God the Son.

They endured. We can endure.

Because some day all our go-moments will be gathered into one eternal coming-together.

“God blesses you who weep now, for in due time you will laugh.” (Luke 6:21)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Thanks for prayers about tomorrow’s chemo infusion, for a good vein and no nausea.
  2. Praise God this will be #16 of 18 infusions!

As Fun as a Root Canal

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Recently I drove to the Chicago area to visit my regular dentist. Actually there’s nothing regular about him, since he’s a specialist in root canals. Normal mouths don’t have a “regular” root canal man, and I’m not proud to say this procedure was my sixth.

Admittedly, the process is less of an ordeal than it used to be in the ‘70’s with those pin-like screws being hand-turned into the nerve and then yanked out again and again. Today’s specialist labored behind magnifying goggles and worked on my tooth with power tools through the eye of a microscope.

After 90 minutes of having had my mouth open, I was finally standing at the front desk with the doctor. “Here are two packets of quadruple strength ibuprofen. Take one right now. Also, I’m giving you a prescription for Vicodin, should you need it. And because we found so much infection, you’ll have to take antibiotics for a while.” He shook my hand and told me to have a nice afternoon.

I thought about my poor, battered tooth. A back molar, it had faithfully done its job without complaint until a couple of months ago when a dull ache started calling for my attention. When I didn’t respond, the ache grew worse and swelling started in the gums, along with occasional sharp pangs. While I was still thinking I hadn’t flossed well enough, an abscess had taken hold. And today the raw truth came out.

Nothing stays hidden forever. God says he’ll bring everything into the open one day, all of our secrets. Nothing escapes his notice, and eventually he’ll prove it to us by showing us (and others) what’s been going on “in the dark.” How goofy to think we could ever pull the wool over God’s eyes or sneak under his radar.

Just recently I learned a friend’s husband had taken up with a woman at his office. He’d kept the relationship under wraps until recently when, against his will, the truth came out, breaking my friend’s heart and destroying their marriage. He thought he could live with one foot in each world, keeping secrets from both women.

To live uprightly when no one’s watching is God’s challenge for all of us every day. Just as he saw my abscess hiding deep in my jaw in its early stages, he sees every choice we make and each action we take, even “in the dark.” For some, the consequences of revealed secrets may be so severe, they’ll long for the simplicity of 90 minutes with the root canal doctor.

“Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know’?” (Isaiah 29:15)

Lookin’ Good!

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This afternoon Mary and I talked about the ravages of time on our old faces and the magic of plastic surgery. Not that we’d do it, even though the mirror says we should. (It’s easier just to avoid the mirror.) But this afternoon we participated in a face lift of a different sort. The two of us put fresh upholstery on eight dining room chairs, a simple way to “lift” a room.

Upholstery staple gunTo be successful required the right tools. Factory-tightened screws can be difficult to loosen, and succeeding assumes you’ve got the right screwdriver. You also need a staple gun, a tool that doubles as a weapon of mass destruction. Keeping a hammer handy is good for staples that don’t go all the way in, and a pliers is effective in yanking out the hopeless ones. A box of Band-Aids isn’t a bad idea, either.

Upholstery staple rejectsDoing something new is never easy, and trudging up the learning curve usually includes a measure of slip-backs: our chair corners ended up with too many folds; staples went in loosey-goosey and needed to be yanked out and redone; stray fabric peeked out from the chair frame, another re-do; one staple-shot grazed my finger and drew blood. But each chair we did got a bit easier and ended up looking nicer than the one before.

Isn’t that the way with life? When something new comes to us, particularly something we don’t want, we look for ways to step away from it. When we finally accept it, it’s usually not as bad as we anticipated. Practice may not make perfect, but working hard to learn something brings improvement.

God often asks us to do new things we don’t want to do, like love unlovable people, suffer intense pain, surrender a spouse or a child, care for someone who doesn’t appreciate it, or wait “forever” to see our prayers answered. But we can get better at handling each of God’s assignments by simply cooperating with his tutoring since he’s the great Supplier of know-how. As we tackle what he sends, little by little we work out the kinks.

Upholstery team workOf course God’s “chores” are far more complicated than fixing up old chairs, but Mary and I learned a few things as we went along. When we started out, our confusion, misuse of tools and lack of knowledge caused us to lose 45 minutes on the first chair. As we went along, there were set-backs and failures, but each cushion taught us better ways to do the same job. The last chair took only six minutes, start to finish. Gathered around the dining room table, our 22 year old chairs don’t show their age at all.

Now, if only Mary and I could use our improved stapling skills to give each other face lifts.

Jesus said, “Blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.” (Luke 11:28)