Could it be Time to Let Go?

If you’ve ever in your life had a death grip on what you believed was your destiny and knew that you could not, would not, ever let go or you’d lose your very reason for living...

Aug 28, 2022

I’m so glad you’re here! You’ve reached a piece writing that is part of a story I began here. You don’t have to read that to enjoy this, but as you may know, context is king. I hope you’ll subscribe and stick around for what happens next. And let me know in the comments below of your experience.

When last we met, I’d given Jesus an ultimatum, accidentally attended a church service, learned that Jesus (according to this priest) didn’t come into the world to annoy and condemn me, and was invited to speak to the vicar of the church because of my facial expressions upon hearing John 3:17 (not 3:16.)

I want to swing the story around now to give you a bigger and perhaps more acute sense of the weight and intensity I was experiencing to help you understand how I could, at the time this story takes place, (about ten years ago) give in to something like, namely: God, that I never would have dreamed of or desired, in fact, fought heartily against, as a freedom living, free thinking, don’t-you-dare-control-me metaphysical believing new-ager. God and religion ain’t gonna happen. Never. Ever.

I’d had a career in New York. I’d lived in LA for eleven years and had a career there as well, though not as my starry ambitious eyes had envisioned. I’d moved back to New York and began again to some immediate success. But now it trailed. Now it weighed on me.

The ever present and growing monster of fibroids in my uterus sought the upward call of my abdomen. This was the single most heavy anvil of a daily silent burden. Growing louder by the hour. It ruled my life. It vacuumed up all other thoughts vying for attention. Worry upon worry.

My part time job as a music teacher was fun but was not making ends meet. I had a sweet family of teachers there, but one of my mentors had been in the hospital with a late-stage cancer diagnosis. Too late. I was substitute teaching her classes in her absence. At the same time of my curious attendance at this church, she was dying. She wouldn’t allow anyone to visit.

She died. My substitution became a permanent replacement. It was a huge and jolting loss for everyone involved. I remember the last time I saw her. She was sitting at her desk, and I was just leaving after teaching a class. We chatted and then I said, “I’ll see you when I see you!” and trotted off. Isn’t it strange how the spirit speaks, and we don’t even know it….

Now there was one more thing happening in the periphery of my family that would come in to serious play in the next five years. But we were only beginning to see the signs. My grandmother (who raised me) was forgetting what you call that long yellow piece of fruit. The one you peel open to eat.

This pulled on me as well from time to time, though she had ample family nearby. But I’d been away (AWAY away) for a long time. Underneath these many layers of weight, I was beginning to reflect on that more.

And then the delightful discourse, you may have already read previously, that became The Agent of Change had made her grand entrance, and then her drunken nightly email exit.

Oh, perhaps I didn’t yet mention, I was just entering my 40th decade.

Timing is everything.

Have you ever experienced a tipping point? That straw on the humpback of the camel the flattens the poor animal – all four legs splayed out? How about the elephant? You know, that big white one in the corner of the room? (Any of the rooms. Because the elephant travels.) One other image comes to mind. That of Ebenezer Scrooge sitting in his empty drawing room when the ringing of every bell sound known to man clangs within his inner ear upon the approach of Marley with a message that would change his world forever. Namely, “Hey Bub, it’s time to take a hard look at the state of affairs. You don’t look so good. What’s that smell? Whatever it is, it wreaks of a bad outlook.” (Not a quote.)

Ever experienced a moment in your life like that?

This was that. Urgent health anxiety and worry, grieving the dying - then the dead, career halting, exhaustion, and tiny bouts of vertigo from anemia, struggling to pay bills, fear that your grandmother is forgetting what to call a banana, AND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY BELLY? SOMETHING IS GROWING INSIDE OF ME!!

So, you know… I decided that maybe, yeah, I’d make an appointment to see this vicar of the church.

Now I may be morphing some of this and that into a more linear experience for you. Some things may be out of order. Did I say “Hi” to the vicar and introduce myself one day before that? Did I hear her speak so that I felt more comfy calling her? Had I already decided that the current jig was up, and I need to make a quick exit stage left? Some of this, some of that. But here we are.

So the upshot of this is that we met. We spoke. It was okay. It wasn’t scary. It didn’t feel like wack-a-mole. It felt like speaking to someone who doesn’t mind hearing all the thing I listed above, but then me not hearing in response “how do you feel about that?” as one might in the nearest therapist’s office.

Instead, she introduced me to the idea of what God may want for me. (New idea to me.) She introduced me to the idea that perhaps I’m being called some place (physical or spiritual) else. (Again, all new.) Perhaps, I must make a choice as to my believing in this loving God… or else… something else will. (Whoa. What? That… doesn’t sound desirable.)

She kept me coming back. She kept me coming back to conversations about people, order, priority… and how priority may look different for me once I understand it from God’s perspective. She helped me let go of my tight grip over my idea of what my life must turn out to be or else.

She helped me lose my life.

Of course I tell this knowing now she was helping me to save my life by losing it utterly. I didn’t know it at the time.

She was there with me when my mentor died. She made it okay not to have an agent at all. She talked to me about my family, my grandmother, and fruit. I began to think of what life might look like among all of these new thoughts and ideas.

She baptized me.

She baptized me in a church in New York City the size of two football stadiums in front of a few hundred people I didn’t know and three important ones that I did. (The ones who weren’t afraid to watch.)

I won’t go deeply into the side-glances happening among family, extended family, (one of which kissed me on the forehead as if to say, I’ll still love even though you’ve gone mad, and others who stopped interaction with me entirely, though with lukewarm politic), and friends as they witnessed these new developments. But, yes, those hurdles were in there, too. Gratefully, I had too much on my plate to add these divisive judges. I was focused on the platter of worry I had already consumed and was attempting to make clean.

Among it all, I had now begun contemplating what, for me, was the unthinkable: leaving New York. Which meant leaving “the business”, quitting my job, and losing my identity. Just leaving it all.

If you’ve ever in your life had a death grip on what you believed was your destiny and knew, in what you thought was your deepest knower, that you could not, would not, ever let go or you’d lose your very reason for living – but somehow then did it anyway. You’ll understand where my heart and mind were at this time.

And you’ll understand why the very act of contemplation of an alternative approach was unthinkable.

I began to contemplate leaving it all.

What would happen if….?

Could it be Time to Let Go?

If you’ve ever in your life had a death grip on what you believed was your destiny and knew that you could not, would not, ever let go or you’d lose your very reason for living...

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