A God Box

God, Letting Go 0

One modest tool for letting go in prayer that I’ve used for twenty-five years is a God box. I’ve relied on every imaginable container — from a pillbox, to my car’s glove box, to decorative boxes friends have given me. The container has to exist in time and space, so you can physically put a note into it, so you can see yourself let go, in time and space.

On a note, I write down the name of the person about whom I am so distressed or angry, or describe the situation that is killing me, with which I am so toxically, crazily obsessed, and I fold the note up, stick it in the box and close it. You might have a brief moment of prayer, and it might come out sounding like this: “Here. You think you’re so big? Fine. You deal with it. Although I have a few more excellent ideas on how best to proceed.” Then I agree to keep my sticky mitts off the spaceship until I hear back.

— Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, p. 36

Unfolding

Acceptance, God, Joy, Letting Go, Life 0

Allowing ourselves the luxury of becoming what God intended is so much more peaceful than trying to force situations whose time has not come. The freedom to let life simply be whatever it will be in this moment gives us a lot of extra time to smile at strangers, to lend a helping hand to others, to watch children running down the street, and to appreciate the birds chirping as we take that early morning walk.

Allowing life to simply be doesn’t mean we stand idly by. On the contrary, it means we honor those directions we feel God is sending us. We listen to those words of guidance we feel are directing our way, making sure that no matter what we do in any given moment, we are not causing harm to someone else. Letting go of our attachment to how our life should unfold is a wonderful gift to give ourselves.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 100

Change

Letting Go, Life, Love 0

Letting go necessitates being with the fear that comes when we become aware that all that we love in the world — our very life itself — is impermanent. It can bring tremendous relief and rest to let go where we are trying to hold on, trying to keep the same those things which by their very nature are constantly changing. This does not mean loving life and the world any less fiercely. Loving well and living fully are not the same as holding on.

— Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance, p. 178

A Joyous Snow Day

Joy, Letting Go, Relationships 0

Allowing others to be responsible for themselves is like taking a vacation in the middle of winter or getting a snow day when one least expects it. It’s freeing. It’s joyous. It releases us to explore a new activity, perhaps. And giving up trying to control others, whomever they happen to be, allows them the respect they deserve.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 88

Being Right

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

Maybe you are in the right. Maybe you are standing on the higher moral ground in this situation, and the other person is clearly wrong. You feel that someone ought to hold the person accountable, and so you are doing your best to bear witness to this injustice — afraid that if you don’t, no one will, and that person will get away with it. Something inside you doesn’t want an injustice to be allowed to stand, unchallenged and unrectified. So you remain attached to being right, but that attachment causes you to suffer. You are the one who is obsessed, and you are the one who is losing sleep over someone else’s actions — therefore, you are the one who will have stress-related health problems. Meanwhile, the villain in this story might be peacefully unconcerned about his wrongdoing and blissfully unaware of your rage — and he is sleeping just fine at night!

— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 25

None of Our Business

Acceptance, Compassion, Letting Go, Relationships 0

Removing ourselves from the thick of a situation that is really none of our business is another way of interpreting the meaning of detachment. It doesn’t mean being uninterested in the people who are close to us or in the ultimate outcome of a situation that has ensnared one of them, or not caring about the well-being of anyone else. It simply means letting the affairs of others belong to those rightful parties. This is really good advice and definitely the advice we’d get from a wise grandparent or mentor or God if we sought God’s help.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 84

Giving Up

Forgiveness, Letting Go 0

Sometimes people are afraid that it is weak to forgive, that they are giving up a battle they must continue to fight. But when we forgive, we are not giving up our value systems, our points of view about an injustice, or our right to dislike someone. We are giving up a rigid attachment to thinking that things could have or should have gone differently. We are giving up the pain from our disappointed expectations. We are giving up the hope for a better past, therefore giving ourselves the gift of a richer present.

— Mary Hayes Grieco, Unconditional Forgiveness, p. 23

The Insidious Power of Blame

Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Relationships, Truth 0

It often takes time for the partners of verbal abusers to realize that the abuser is the one with the problem. Most women who are verbally abused spend time focused inward, soul-searching, taking inventory, trying to identify their “sins,” trying to find out what they did wrong. Because they have been blamed for their pain, they look inside for solutions. With no place even to turn their anger, unless against themselves, they have nowhere to go and no one who would understand. So they believe the lie. “There must be something I can do.”

Looking back on their lives, survivors have wondered why they spent any time at all in the situations they were in. Was it just low self-esteem? I don’t think so. I believe that never knowing quite what was wrong because they were always being blamed did much more than erode their self-esteem. It so totally denied their experience and invalidated them that eventually there was nothing they felt they could know for certain, nothing on which to base action. Being blamed is one of the most common experiences of the partner of an abuser and may do more than any other abuse to disempower the partner….

Sadly, many women go through their lives in pain and confusion trying to find out what is wrong while their culture tells them “nothing is wrong.” Women who went to many sources looking for help were told to try harder, as if the abuse was their fault and their suffering the norm. For them the whole world was crazymaking.

Once a woman is aware of the ways she is blamed by her culture (“What did you do to provoke him?”), she finds it easier to look outside herself. In a verbally abusive relationship, this is essential. She must come to realize that the abuse has nothing to do with her. It is very difficult for anyone, including the partner of the abuser, to grasp that a person who seems to get along quite well in the world, as many verbal abusers do, could suddenly lash out unprovoked at his partner for no apparent reason. Yet this is exactly what happens.

— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 77-78