Letting Go and Holding On - 12-21-10

On Saturday, my Facebook app, “On This Day, God Wants You to Know,” gave me this word – and it is indeed a “word,” a truth I needed to hear:

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On this day, God wants you to know that love is the opposite of logic. Logic is argumentative, aggressive on the mind, splits the world into right and wrong, us and them. Love is generative, compassionate, embracing all creation. Logic pays attention to what is being said. Love pays attention to how things are said. Logic leads to debate. Love leads to communion. Practice love to be closer to God.

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And that’s really the crux of it, of this whole devastation of the last quarter of a year. Every time I’ve tried to accept God’s promise to lead me, to make his way known to me, and follow the path of that belief through the last year of my life, I get stuck on the logic. The logic does not add up. I get that faith is not always logical, that is, predictable. But I always held to a certain innate logic in faith in God’s promises: You receive the promise that he will lead you, you get led, and you find yourself in a place that corresponds with the leading. But my experience was not like that. I trusted that promise – the promise that really underpinned my entire faith and confidence in God – sensed exactly what that promise looked like being fulfilled (all the words and stirrings in my soul, the corresponding emotions) and saw my path remain straight and unwavering toward B____. Then come to find out he’s engaged and I can’t feel it’s right to keep drawing to me another woman’s man. The only logical end would be that he leaves her and comes back to me, and I can no longer believe such a development. So that leaves me with an end that completely flouts logic, which sends earth-shattering reverberations back through my analysis.

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So to get this word helped me to see what I am to think about that irreconcilable logic: let it go. Now, I am made to be logical. It is an integral part of my nature. It is my design. But I cannot love or trust God again as long as I hold onto this logic, as long as I own these questions and the desperate need for answers to them. So I won’t. I’m letting go. I am letting go of B____, of the question, “What the HELL!” of the dreams I dreamed that are merely still-smoking ash. I’m not owning anymore the how, the why, even the what. I no longer see clearly any of the desires of my heart except to be my size 6 again (every part of my life has been out of balance lately).

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God’s going to make it right because he said so. He’s going to repay the decades the locusts have eaten because he promised. He will give me double portion for my losses because that is what he swore by his name. Do I know how? Nope. Am I stuck on that anymore? Not a chance. I’m letting go of the logic that says, “If his ‘leadings’ ended up being wrong or misinterpreted, then how can I trust him to lead me right from here on out?” Not asking that anymore. B____ is gone. So are my dreams. So is my confidence in my desires. So is my ability to give a damn about it. But my God is not.

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He’s been there with me through the questions, the darkness, the grief, the anger, the frustration, the sense of betrayal, the inability to forgive. He’s been there when I was trying to reach him and when I didn’t want to be reached. Most of all he’s been with me through the unparalleled and all-consuming confusion and inability to trust.

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A few days before I got that word on Facebook, I read an article on a study done by a Dr. Kristen Swanson on the effects of miscarriage on couples. The last question of the interview – and her answer to it – resonated with me.

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What do you tell couples who are struggling with the feeling that they are never going to feel good again as a result of miscarriage?

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All of us on this planet are hardwired to deal with the comings and goings, especially the living and dying of the natural order. Sudden car crashes, losing a ten-year-old, these things are harder to rebound from, but the natural cycle of miscarriage and people dying in old age – we’re made to heal and deal from that. But we do have a healing process that must unfold. The wailing, and the crying, and the being confused (emphasis mine), the looking for answers – whether that’s in a glass of champagne or running three miles a day – those things are parts of our process, so lean into your grief. You were hardwired to do this and it won’t last forever.

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That statement about being confused especially struck a chord with me. A part of me resisted the “moving on” part of that process, balked at the prospect of it not lasting forever. I wanted to be free of the pain, but truly accepting everything as it stands would then mean I had indeed been wrong. That I really was like everybody else, that my story was utterly unoriginal, just a tired regurgitation of well-worn tragedies. I had always been different, and I had relished the idea that that could not only mean I would be weird and out-of-step as I’ve always felt, but also the other side of the coin – that I would get to be special, too, with a story, a destiny that was not to be found around every corner. So moving on and feeling better meant that this was all going to be firmly and finally consigned to the past, no appendix, no addendum, no post-script to save it from utter, meaningless obscurity.

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Well. I’m letting go of that as well. So what. It doesn’t matter. And if it does matter, let some other power or party make it matter, because I’m not holding on to it and making it matter.

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Shit happens. And I’m taking those lemons and – if not making lemonade – am at least not masochistically shoveling them into my mouth to sour everything I taste.

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I would like to believe I’m special. I would like to think I have a grand, unique destiny that means something. I want to do or be something that means something, that makes a difference. I would like to think that there’s true hope, not just the false stuff I’ve been choking myself on. I’d like to think there’s some hope for me, the foolishly, incurably optimistic. I’d like to believe in possibilities again, that everything I want is not met with a resounding NO.

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My friend, Delayna, posted this quote on her Facebook wall:

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I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times I have been a victim of my own optimism.

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Well, ain’t that a bitch. Mainly because it’s true. Of course in this case (as in all the others of my life), I just categorically wasn’t wanted. That may have had something to do with it. I just have to accept that that is my story and my disillusionment after a lifetime of trying and failing to live a life beyond such narrowly focused scope.

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There was also a section of an urban fantasy book I was reading the other day that I reluctantly admitted was what I had become, to a tee. It was in Alyson Noël’s Immortals book, Dark Flame:

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For example, let’s say you have a girl, she’s made a few mistakes, and she’s so down on herself, feeling so undeserving of all the love and support that’s being offered, so sure she has to go it alone, make amends on her own terms, her way, and ultimately becoming so obsessed with her tormentor, she ends up cutting off all those around her, so she has more time to concentrate on the one person she despises the most, channeling all her attention on him . . .

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Yup. That has been me. Every word. And I’m going to stop. I’m choosing to believe there’s hope and a future, and allow myself to want it. I’m letting go of the past so I can reach the future. I can’t keep hold of both. I’m holding on to Jeremiah 29:11, every word:

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“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

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Hit it.