"it's holding tight, and letting go..."

"it's holding tight,
and letting go;
it's flying high,
and laying low..."

Clint Black's 1997 hit  "Something That We Do,"  is something of an anthem for me. So much of the success stories we hear - in regard to love, are about holding on. But there was a time in my life when I really needed to hear that love was also about letting go

As a family steeped in adoption, this was a theme in our lives.  The bittersweet paradox of love. For us to be able to be a family, a birth mother -- or birthparents -- had to let go. And yet, I believed that through the path of open adoption -- the ongoing relationship between birth families and adoptive families -- letting go could also include holding on. I still do.

But when it came to marriage, for me it was all about holding on. Holding on for dear life. And this holding on was not always gentle. Sometimes it was frantic and desperate. In fact, it was often like that for me. I would not be a quitter. And I wouldn't let anyone else quit either.

But I have learned that sometimes love is letting go. After decades of refusing to "give up," one day God asked me, "do you love him enough to let him go?" It had never occurred to me that loving someone could mean not trying harder. But as I let that question sink in, I thought about how much I loved my daughters and what loving them had looked like - from the moment they came into our family.  And it was more about letting go, than holding on.

It started with letting go of my dreams of how I would become a mother.  Then it was sharing them with others: placing them in the arms of family and friends who loved them, trusting a babysitter, leaving them in the Children's Room during church services.  Before we knew it, we were dropping them off at pre-school, sports events, sleepovers, camp, international service projects, expeditions, college...

Letting go wasn't about giving up with our daughters, and it wasn't about giving up on my marriage. It was about loving enough to trust God's tender, constant, unfolding care for each of us. I can only speak for myself, but for me, it was about surrendering self-will and pride for spiritual growth and humility. It was about holding on to my highest sense of living love, while letting go of what I thought it should look like.

For those who think that this is some version of self-justification, I can assure you that it is not. I have spent countless nights rehearsing that day -- when after years of trying harder and praying more -- God broke through my self-certainty, with piercing clarity, and asked me to love enough, to let go.

It was not the first time God had spoken to me in this way -- so it wasn't a foreign language. Some years earlier, when my husband and I were in the process of adopting our first child -- a son -- his birthmother was prayerfully led to reconsider her decision to surrender. Our adoption agency had made it clear that since he was already in our home, we could contest her change of heart.

But that was the thing -- it was all about hearts. The night before she was to give us all her final decision, I was sitting alone praying about what to do.  And out-of-the-blue God asked me, "Some day that baby will be a boy of twelve. Will you be able to say to him, "your mother wanted to raise you, but we fought to keep you."

My heart surrendered in a moment. And as painfully hard as it was, I never regretted that surrender. Years later, the Voice, and the feeling, were the same -- and I knew. I felt it pierce all the disappointment and pride. All the human will and hardness. I knew it had nothing to do with not loving him -- but loving him more.

Mary Baker Eddy has this to say in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn life in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, "Canst thou by searching find out God?"

For me it read, "Then we begin to learn love in divine Science. Each time I have been asked to let go, my understanding of Love has expanded beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  I have learned more about love, and my relationship to God -- the Source of all love -- by the weaning, more than by the holding on.

And in truth, we never really let go of what we love - only of our sense of personal attachment and possession. We are not the arbiters of love in our lives -- of its presence in our hearts. We love, who and what we love by divine appointment. We can't control that. But we can let God define how we relate to one another, moment-by-moment.

Love is a verb. Nothing can keep us from being love. Nothing can deprive us of our right to love.  It is the one real power we have. Think of it.  No one can stop you from loving them -- from being conscious of, seeing, and calling attention to the best in them. Every relationship in our lives is the ebb and  flow of holding on to what is true about another -- and letting go of what isn't.

Whether it is in the day-to-day surrender of our children to teachers and friendships, or the letting go of what we think define us, and how we live, love, and work together. We are never separated from those we love. We hold them forever in our hearts - as tenderly remembered experiences, through co-parenting, and in our genuine hopes for their future joy in loving -- and perhaps, loving someone new. In this way, there really is no separation, only the surrender of outlines and attachments.

Letting go in love is not a failure. It is just another way of loving someone. Every moment of loving is a remarkable moment of success over self. In this, there is no failed love. Time doesn't validate love. Loving validates love.

I love these lyrics from "Something That We Do":

"We help to make each other
all that we can be.

Though we can find
our strength and inspiration
independently.

The way we work together
is what sets our love apart."

Life is eternal. There will be an infinite number of loves in our lives. May each one bring you nearer to God - the Source of all love. May you know the eternity of loving without possession or attachment. May you feel the power of love as an active, unstoppable, irresistible verb. May you know the love that is both holding tight, and letting go.


offered with Love,

Kate

[photo by Katariina Agnes Fagering - used with permission]