Letting Go 1

Good morning! I apologize for no blog post yesterday; internet issues. Gotta love ’em.

Today I am wresting with something, but I think it’s something that might benefit others too, so I’m going to share it.

In my life, the biggest sorrow I have had, short of losing someone close to me, is being left out. It doesn’t matter if I’m 14 or 40, to be aware of being not included in something that my friends are in hurts. There are legitimate reasons for this, and it is a real thing. I grieve for a reason.

As I look through my life I see the loss of groups over and over again. This is something that has some normalcy to it. Your Middle School friends may not be there in High School. Your High School friends may not be there in college. Your crocheting friends may not want to join you in polka dancing, etc. Hopefully, we find a community we can stay with. But we may also lose what is important to us many many times. And sometimes it really hurts.

There is something else, and I am embarrassed to say it, being from the Northwest where such things are uncool. I have realized that popularity is an idol for me. I want to be liked by everyone. I struggle to let go of this.

Though losing groups and the wound of rejection sometimes comes from bad behavior on someone else’s part or my own, and though God who is love personified, did not wish that bad behavior or my grief, might it still be a gift?  I can’t please everyone, and not being included by everyone means less asked of me.  I want time to have one on one conversations, and being in every group would never give me that. I want time to be alone with God, and popularity doesn’t tend to lead to that so much.  And most of all, I want to put my happiness in something that will never ever fail me. And that is not people. People aren’t the answer to fulfillment. They are co-travelers on the journey to and with something greater.

This is the second day of Lent, and I am also struggling with those things that I’ve given up. I want them. But I know I will be more peaceful in the end. The groups that I don’t have anymore — maybe somehow that is also the case. I know God never wanted this grief or the bad behavior. But maybe . . . just maybe . . . there is a gift in it that leads to something much more beautiful and everlasting.

May God bless your day.