Something Better Is Brewing.

Letting Go, Life, Obedience, Trust 0

This is at least some of what it means to “wait on the Lord.”  Waiting on God does not mean passive indifference — hanging around and doing nothing.  It has more to do with saying no to impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions or decisions, and by so doing, saying yes to something you know will satisfy much better down the line.  Those who have not yet learned how to wait on the Lord may tend to indulge in something immediate that only half satisfies.  But Christians who have fostered a degree of self-control — Christians who know God better — don’t mind putting pleasure on hold.  They know something better is brewing down the line.

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, May 2 entry

You Are Enough.

Joy, Letting Go, Life, Relationships 0

Throughout this book, I’ve been carrying on about men and finding them and getting them and keeping them and deciding whether or not to kill them, and if so, how, and so on.  And that’s all funny and mostly true and all that, but the real truth is you are enough — just the way you are, just who you are.  You are a complete entity, a whole person, right there in the skin you’re in.  You don’t need to have a guy to be happy.  Admit it: You have more fun with a gang of girlfriends than you’ve had on the absolute best date of your entire life.  If somebody comes along who treats you right and makes you happy and you can do the same for him, well, that’s just dandy.  But I’m telling you, the only way that I know to get and keep a happy, healthy relationship is first to create a happy and healthy life for yourself without one.  This is your life to live.

— Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men, p. 206

God Catches Our Balloons

God, Letting Go, Life, Trust 0

When my children were young, they loved brightly colored helium balloons.  But sometimes either accidentally or purposely, they’d let go of the string.  There they’d stand, with tears in their eyes, watching their precious balloon fly high into the heavens until it disappeared from sight.

When that happened, I’d tell them a story.

“Don’t cry,” I’d say.  “God’s up there.  And you know what?  He catches every balloon you let go of.  He’s keeping all of them just for you.  Someday, when you get to heaven, you’ll get every one back.”

My children are older now; so am I.  But we still believe God’s saving our balloons for us.

And I believe God catches all our balloons too — each one we let go of.  Only we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to get them back.  The best and most perfect of our balloons, the ones just right for us, He gives back as soon as we’re ready to accept them.  Sometimes, He gives back better ones than we let go of.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 243

Willingness and Trust

God, Letting Go, Trust 0

Surrendering and letting go are about willingness and trust.  They’re about having enough faith to want something so much that we can taste it; then deliberately letting go of our desires and trusting our Higher Power to do for us what He wants, when He wants.  They’re about believing in God and His love for us even when it hurts….

We don’t have to surrender or let go perfectly.  We only need do it as well as we can, today.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 241

Surrendering

Letting Go 0

What is surrendering?  What does it mean to “let go”?  Surrendering is accepting; letting go is releasing.  Surrendering is acknowledging the authority of a Higher Power; letting go is trusting His authority.

What do we need to surrender to and let go of?  Our past, present, and future.  Our anger, resentments, fears, hopes, and dreams.  Our failures, successes, hate, love, and desires.  We let go of our time frame, our wants, sorrows, and joys.  We release our old messages, our new ones, our defects of character, and attributes.  We let go of people, things, and sometimes ourselves.  We need to let go of changes, changing, and the cyclical nature of love, recovery, and life itself.

We release our guilt and shame over being not good enough, and our desire to be better and healthier.  We let go of things that work out and things that don’t, things we’ve done, and things we haven’t done.  We let go of our unsuccessful relationships and our healthy relationships.  We let go of the good, the bad, the painful, the fun, and the exciting.  We surrender to and let go of our needs.  Often, a hidden need to be in pain and suffering is underneath our failed relationships, pain, and suffering.  We can let go of that too.  All of it must go.

Surrendering doesn’t mean we stop desiring the good.  It means that after acknowledging our desires, we relinquish them and get peaceful and grateful about circumstances, people, and our lives exactly as they are today.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 240

Finding Thrills

Letting Go, Life 0

What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.  The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies.  It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do.  Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.  But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.  It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them.  It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity