CHAPTER 1
Why Am I Stuck?
But this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward towhat lies ahead.... (Phil 3:13b)
I was determined to get it right this time. As I carried the tiny artificialChristmas tree into the motel room, I realized my work was cut out for me. Thespace looked drab, lifeless, utilitarian. Maybe David's and Harrison's favoriteornaments, packed away in the boxes I lugged inside, would provide a familiartouch, a heart connection to the poignant past. I had hauled them all the wayfrom Texas to Tennessee in a fervent effort to bring some nostalgic merriment toour Christmas dinner and gift exchange. Come to think of it, it wasn't evenChristmas Day yet—that was a full five days ahead. But this was the only timeslot that could be wedged into the competing schedules of a divorced family.
It was a far cry from the Currier and Ives celebrations enshrined in my memory.During those early years, our Tennessee home had been the center of yuletidegatherings—neighborhood caroling parties, large family reunions, holidaysongfests around the player piano, and always the Christmas Eve family communionservice at the church. I was determined to re-create the atmosphere, if not thereality, of those happy holiday occasions, even within the boundaries of sharedcustody agreements. Eight years before, I had reluctantly given up the marriage.But I refused to give up the memories.
David and Harrison, then twenty-two and seventeen, had become accustomed to theChristmas chaos during the four years since I had moved to Dallas. It had becomea frustrating problem in logistics for all of us, but especially for the boys,pulled hither and yon by the needy love of friends and relatives from twofamilies. Though I tried to be especially sensitive to their discomfort, thetruth was that I was also one of the needy ones—maybe the most needy. This yearit was their father's turn to be with the boys on December 25th, but I toldmyself that it didn't really matter. I would simply summon extra effort andcreativity and invent a festive environment. I could produce it like a play,choreographing every scene. So I purchased the best chicken dinners ColonelSanders had to offer, placed them on holly-printed paper plates, and lit thecandles. Our time together would be a bona fide Merry Christmas, no matter themakeshift location.
Well, this Christmas concoction in the motel suite was anything but merry.Despite everyone's best efforts, the gathering felt contrived, stilted, phony.We hid behind plastic smiles that said, "We're going to pretend this is fun!!"It was as if we were burying—one more time—that recurrent sadness anddisappointment and yearning for yuletides past. But deep down the evening felt,at least to me, like just one more thing to get through, another item to checkoff the holiday list.
Year after year, I had been inventing new activities and trying desperately tofollow the advice in the blended family books: "Create new holiday habits!" Butmy bag of magic tricks was just about empty. I was emotionally exhausted fromthe effort of producing the perfect substitute Christmas for my children. Mystubborn holding-on to unrealistic expectations had me stuck. Something had tochange. I had to let go of my illusion that by sheer force of will andcreativity, I could make everything okay for my sons, not to mention myself.Little did I realize that my desperation was leading me into unfamiliarterritory—the land of letting go. I didn't know what I was in for.
Of course, I thought I already knew what letting go was all about. Hadn't Imoved from my Tennessee home and confronted the challenges of urban Texas?Hadn't I shed my persona as small town southern belle and leapt into the big-citymilieu of Dallas? I may have been conscious of the external behaviors ofletting go, but the unconscious layers underneath—the internal work—was foreignterritory to me.
And I was truly stuck, mired in the mud of negativity, looking for a lifeline.So I turned where I had always turned when I was at the end of my rope ofindependence, when my storehouse of human resourcefulness was bankrupt. I turnedto the faith in God that was a part of my very bones and being.
It had been that way for as long as I could remember—all the way back totortured teen years when I would sneak into the empty church sanctuary inSavannah, Tennessee, and sink to my knees in anguish over a current crisis. Iseemed always to be trying to connect the dots between the words in the sermonsand the tumult in my life. I wanted the Christian story to make a difference inthe way I lived—or else what was the point? The words of Jesus had to haverelevance to the day's events; otherwise they seemed like pretty platitudes thatwere nice to believe but didn't change anything.
How was it possible to be kind to those who excluded me? If I prayed for what Iwanted, would God really hear me? Prayer that began as a matter of asking forfriends or romance or a college scholarship began evolving into a conversationwith a steadfast Friend to whom I poured out my adolescent angst. A part of meknew that there was more to prayer than a laundry list of requests directed to acelestial bell hop, but the mystery of it all confounded me. Even through thedoubts about dogma, something hopeful kept persisting. There was an underlyingsense of the reality of God in my life that hung on like a dog with a bone—aLove that would not let me go.
As the years passed, life continued to challenge my religious assumptions. Andthe naive notion that "If you do good, good will come to you" was sorely testedin the crucible of my divorce. I had wanted nothing quite so much as success asa wife and mother, and my husband's unhappiness in our marriage had devastatedmy self-esteem. I had tried my best and been found wanting. Or at least that'show it felt to me at the time.
Some parts of the Christian message were like balm to my soul during thoseterrible months, and some most definitely were not. Friends and family, whoseloving care literally glued me back together, were the embodiment of God'sdivine comfort. They prayed for me, ranted with me, cooked and cleaned my house,helped with the care of my boys—a stunned nine-year-old and an angry fourteen-year-old.
But one question—posed by a well-meaning friend—rearranged the pieces of what Ithought I believed. With a voice full of sincere concern, she asked me, "Wonderwhat God is trying to teach you through this?" I wasn't prepared for the ragethat erupted inside me. I was forced to confront my own questions about God'srole in the tragedies of our lives. I refused to believe that the God who hadbeen my comforter and friend all those years would engineer painful life eventsto teach me a lesson. That was not a God I wanted to worship.
It would take years to make my peace with the mysterious relationship betweendivine providence and free will. I literally had to "live into the answer" andto experience first hand that, indeed, "All things work together for good forthose who love God...." (Rom 8:28). Not all things are good, but rather allthings can work toward good. As I began to redefine my faith—again—another truthemerged. I realized that there would be no end to this "redefining," that we areall works in progress in the hands of a loving and patient God, a God who worksthrough the ups and downs of life, not apart from them.
So, here I was again, five days before Christmas, standing on the threshold ofyet another life lesson as my boys and I opened the pretty packages with "oohs"and "aahs" and "thank-you's." My well-maintained façade of perfect survivor wasbeginning to crumble. As soon as this evening was over, I told myself, I wouldhave to figure it out and fix it.
Later, I tried to attack the problem in my usual methodical way, by settingreachable goals and developing a plan of action. But it seemed that God haddeeper work in mind—the stripping away of more layers of my own reliable defensemechanisms. The challenge wasn't just about control of Christmas. Nor was itmerely about a mother's desire to protect her children from pain. Just what wasI holding on to and why? Did I see myself as a victim? Had that become myidentity? What payoff was I getting? If I let go of this fierce protectivenessof the boys, did that mean that I was not the mother who could make it okay,soothe every anxiety, bandage every wound? And—the real clinker—was I ready toface my own unconscious contributions to the breakup of my marriage?
As I was climbing off my high horse of perfectionism, God was loosening the soilof other buried illusions and attitudes. Each question led to a deeper layer,ultimately leading away from the surface events to the very center of myself,forcing me to deal with issues of acceptance, surrender, and authentic trust. Ididn't realize that honestly facing those questions would take the rest of mylife.
So that night in the Old English Inn off Interstate 40, we gobbled up the friedchicken and politely thanked each other for the gifts. We hugged and called outour "Merry Christmases," but I could already feel the beginning of an innershift in my soul. Something new was emerging. A freer self was lurking behindall the shoulds and oughts and musts. I began to loosen my grip on the past sothat new life could be born—whether in a manger or in a motel.
For Reflection
1. Is there a situation in your life where you feel stuck?
2. What are the signs and symptoms of this kind of inertia?
3. What kind of courage is required to pursue self-reflection?
4. Anais Nin once penned these words: "And the day came when the risk to remaintight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom...." What doyou think she meant?
5. When does the risk to remain stuck become more painful than the risk of lettinggo?
CHAPTER 2
Why Do I Need to Let Go?
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John12:24)
I was alarmed at the tone of Aunt Martha's voice on the phone. My cheerful,self-sufficient, eighty-something aunt was the matriarch of the family, a modelof independence since being widowed twenty years before. Her usual upbeatdemeanor was gone. It was as if her very life had been drained from her.
As I pressed her with more probing questions, she admitted that she had justattended her fourth funeral that week, a memorial service for a Sunday Schoolclass member several years her junior. "Guess I'd better find myself someyounger friends," she remarked sadly, making a futile attempt at humor.
As I hung up the phone, I realized that her losses were piling up daily. She hadbeen caretaker for her husband until his death, and she nursed my mother, thenher mother, then the rest of her siblings. Now her once-full roster of friendshad shrunk to just a few, and it seemed their numbers were diminishing daily.
She wasn't simply losing the people in her life; she was losing a way of life.She could no longer drive. She could no longer see well enough to read. She hadbeen forced to give up much of her independence. The loss of her younger selfhad occasioned a host of issues of letting go, from her eyesight to herwaistline to her friendships. How had she learned to cope with the accelerationof losses common to old age? While some folks like Martha seemed somehow toassimilate loss, I knew others who railed against it, becoming continualcomplainers with shriveling souls.
It brought to my mind another recent conversation—one I overheard between my sonand daughter-in-law, both medical internists. They were discussing their agingpatients, and one said to the other: "It seems as people age, they divide intotwo camps—those who decide to keep growing and adapting to change and those whostagnate." Like any good mother-in-law, I butted right into their conversationand asked, "What does that look like? What did you notice about these people?How can you tell the difference?"
And they didn't mince any words. "The first group," they explained, "ischaracterized by openness to change, curiosity, willingness to ask the toughquestions. They allow old patterns to be challenged and their future expandsinto deeper wisdom and growth. In the second group, the opposite occurs. Thefuture contracts into a rigid and passive existence where old patterns harden,where prejudices and judgments and opinions are set in concrete. They don't knowhow to let go."
David added, "Oh, you know, Mom. People who say things like 'My mind is made up;don't confuse me with the facts' or 'In my day' as if they have turf to protector a stubborn need to be right—people who are set in their ways?
Even modern science is attempting to speak to this common dilemma by studyingthose who grow old in a positive and meaningful way. The traditional medicallens has focused on "fixing it when it's broken." But now, researchers arebeginning to look at the aging process through a different lens. What keeps uswell? What makes us happy? What keeps us from becoming both bored and boring?What helps us adjust not only to aging but also to life? We're becoming familiarwith terms like preventive medicine, holistic health, and the interactionbetween mind, body, and spirit. With each investigation and discovery, we'rereaching a better understanding of the psalmist's words: "... I am fearfully andwonderfully made" (Ps 139:14).
Several years ago, the TV news magazine 20/20 featured a segment on the study ofone hundred active centenarians from cultures around the globe. To inspire therest of us to grow older with zest, the study pinpointed common traits shared bythese healthy, productive elders.
It turns out that there was no magic potion. But there were four attributes thatall these centenarians shared:
1. a fundamental optimism about people and life in general
2. engagement in some passion (anything from gardening to church work to weaving toteaching)
3. regular physical activity
4. the ability to adapt to loss, to let go
Learning to let go may take a lifetime, but contemporary science says it's worthit. As the habits of this select group of high-functioning adults show, one ofthe serendipities seems to be the ability to live better and longer. The elderlyfolks in the study had developed ways to release the old in preparation forreceiving the new, entering into a basic rhythm of change that is built intocreation.
If God created the world in this fashion, doesn't it make sense to get in syncwith that intrinsic pattern? People who do tend to live more robust, productivelives that spill over into the lives of others, creating a kind of happycontagion. If loss and gain are built into the very fabric of creation, thenperhaps getting into harmony with that reality is an automatic life-enhancer, awin-win situation. This same dynamic is found in the concept of the "helper'shigh" where both those who give help and those who receive it are beneficiariesof grace. Dealing creatively with loss somehow puts us in harmony with the granddesign of creation.
Look around you. The pattern of loss and gain is everywhere! Winter is followedby spring; night is followed by day; death is followed by resurrection. Godcreated everything from galaxies to trees to human beings with inherent cyclesof loss and gain. But unlike trees, we humans have the wonderful and terriblegift of free will. We can choose to cooperate with this natural divine processor we can fight against it. We can spend our whole lives refusing to loosen ourgrasp. No matter how fervently we pray, God will not arbitrarily take away thatwhich we refuse to release.
We usually think of loss and gain in terms of the tangible: persons when theydie or leave, places when we must relocate, or things when we attempt tosimplify our lives. But the layers of letting go are much more pervasive thanthat. We're engulfed in a myriad of intangibles that need releasing. What aboutour attachment to being right, our illusion that the world should be fair, ourunspoken requirement that everyone agree with us? Unless we learn the art ofthese necessary goodbyes and hellos, we risk remaining stuck in patterns thatretard our growth and make us miserable.
