What is it about letting go that has us holding on so tight?

The things we were asked to carry but never meant to hold are, by far, the hardest to let go.

It’s late November, and the autumn skies won't be bothered to hurry. Somewhere on the other side of the setting sun, winter waits. Look around, and you can hear it whispering to you, compelling you to hush the hurry and embrace the waning moments of the season. This day finds me in the City of Roses, my birthplace, Portland, Oregon. Born in the City of Roses requires one to live amongst the thorns. Roses beauty, thriving in the thickest of thickets. I walk the soggy streets, capturing the mosaic masterpiece unfolding before me, praying the winter winds of Christmas don’t hurry me along. I pull my jacket a little tighter and close my eyes to a sun that broke free from a patchwork of clouds stitched together for days. The downpour outside mirrors the apprehension in my heart. This day holds me captive in time, and the melody of a memory pulls my gaze to the dying leaves falling all around me. Quietly humbled, I admire their ability to let go and embrace the fading season with remarkable beauty and grace.

Somewhere on the other side of the setting sun, a new day will dawn, and time will have me longing for this moment. I slow my steps and kick the fallen leaves that grace the path beneath my feet. I breathe in the memories of the city I find myself in today. I walk through time; heading to where my story began and the interruption that called me home to find the heart I left here all those years ago. As I walk, I ask myself the same question that has troubled my steps for over two years.

What is it about letting go that has us holding on so tight?

The answer remains hidden beneath a weeping sky, so I walk on through time. Through a time around the corner and long ago times, through time spent waiting and for a time yet to come. Autumn does that to us. Somehow it calls to us from the past and anchors us in a very present future. We count down the days until Christmas while looking back at a year quickly leaving us. The moments behind us and those before us, we stay suspended in mid-air with the order of things, waiting somewhere in the messy middle. This day, like most, has me in midair, falling like the leaves from the barren branches. Somewhere between what was and what will be. I walk on through time as the days march toward my dog-eared day of days.

As I count down, I fall back. All the way, 679 days ago to be precise. Almost two years later, and time, like a summer wind gathering momentum, moved on without me. But that’s how life works; when we hold on to something that God only intended for us to carry, we become stuck at a fixed point while time and life carry on without us. With each heavy step, I feel the weight of my breaths, urging me on like the wind, closer and closer towards the second anniversary of an interruption that changed my life forever. The day God saw all that I was holding and came down to carry me somewhere I couldn't get to myself. The day I became a girl interrupted by love. The day I woke up completely deaf in my right ear, no warning, no explanation, nothing but cold hard concrete and the hardest of falls.

Two years have passed since a profound loss marked the day with indelible ink. Two years of grieving and waiting, questioning and wrestling. Two years of forcing and hoping. Two years of half-living and pretending, praying and pleading. Two years since my world became a monochromatic symphony of silence and sound, with a mind unable to fully exist in either. Splitting down the center of me, two halves, no longer whole. Waiting for the ground to hold my feet steady, for the vertigo to stop its negotiating. Waiting for sound to reach my right ear and for the bell to stop its toll. Waiting for the nonsense to make some sense. Waiting for the dotted line, several deadlines, and my timeline. Fearing His time, and for an answer that might never come. Just waiting. Unable to fully move forward and incapable of going back, I held on to my loss, my grief, suffering silently in my newly found silent world. I held on with a grief that bled me slow. Stalled me still. And stole the life right out of me.

The grief of my hearing loss was the only thing I had left of my old life, of me. A life I had just made peace with, a person I had just barely learned to love, and a God I thought I had finally come to understand. Grief became my comfort; my loss was the closest of friends. When we hold things that closely, they become part of us, dragging us into places we were never meant to go, forcing us to become people we were never supposed to be. So we keep on holding, instead of carrying them to the cross. We hold on to the disappointment, failure, grief, and anger because if we let them go, what would we have left? What would be left of us? So we hold on and walk on, exhausted with the weight of it all. Unable to break free, we get caught in the in-between, free-falling in the wait. And oh how the wait becomes the heaviest of weights.

Under the increasing weight, our steps become heavy, and the weight falls slow, and slowly life bleeds right out of us. When we hold on to something God only intended us to carry, we lose the life we hold so dearly. A weight like that kills a man, and God knew that. He knew a death like that was a weight only His Son could carry, and He did. Jesus carried it straight to the cross. He loved me more than my pain, my anger, my failure, and the loss I so desperately kept holding. Jesus held my loss closer than His own, and He bled for it and broke under the weight of it, and He carried it straight to the grave. My father's heart experienced the worst kind of pain, but for the love of my heart and the life of my soul, He exchanged His loss for mine. A love like that carries a weight hard to hold, hard to receive.

So instead of receiving that love, I held that loss, that life, closer and closer every time I climbed the mountain. Unwilling to let it go and lay it down, I came back down the mountain with the same weight and then some. The problem with holding on to something God only intended us to carry is that we grasp for anything and everything that was never ours to hold. One thing adds up after another. In fear of what we are losing, of how much we have lost, we scramble and scrape, scavenge, and hoard anything and everything that makes us feel the loss less. Anything that makes us feel less empty, anything to make us feel… less. So we keep on holding, and we keep on walking, carrying us further and further from the cross. Further and further from the gifts God intends to give and fill the empty heart of a surrendered hand. Further and further from the love His Son died to save, further and further from life everlasting from a deep but empty grave. He did it for love, if only for me, but also for you.

Refusing the gift no more, I empty my hands and let go. I surrender my heart to the One already holding mine. I raise my emptied hands to a sky still pouring rain in a city still covered with thorns and praise my God, my Father, whose passion for my heart was greater than my own. Cut out pieces of heart stitched whole, I praise my Lord, my Savior, for the love that interrupted my story and the grace that saved my soul.

It's late November, and the stores want our hearts to hurry towards Christmas. The world wants us to get caught in the messy middle of things and fill our calendars with plans and our agendas with to-dos. This life wants us to count our losses and hold them until our fingers bleed. Hold on so tight until we care so little. Leaving us with little room to be interrupted. Little room to stop and feel the weight of all we are holding, creating little space in our hearts to receive love. I pray you choose to stop and look at what your hands are holding. I pray you dare to let it go. I pray you hush the hurry and feel the slow drip of the last days in a season quickly fading. I pray you make room to be interrupted. I pray you empty your hands and make space for love.

On the other side of the setting sun, Christmas waits. Empty your hands, and make space to let love find you. He is coming.