“The great paradox is that it is in letting go, we receive. We find safety in unexpected places of risk. And those who try to avoid all risk, those who would try to guarantee that their hearts will not be broken, end up in a self-created hell.
C.S Lewis wrote in the The Four Loves:
To love at all is to be vulnerable…If you want to make sure of keeping [your heart] intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries and busyness; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in the casket—safe, dark motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken—it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable….The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the danger of love is Hell.
In so many ways, the more we insist on control and the more we resist the call to hold our lives lightly, the more we have to deny the reality of our losses and the more artificial our existence becomes. Our belief that we should grasp tightly what we need provides one of the great sources of our suffering. But letting go of possessions and plans and people allows us to enter, for all its risks, a life of new, unexpected freedom.
It is our great illusion that life is a property to be owned or an object to be grasped, that people can be managed or manipulated. We sometimes try to establish a logic by which things must happen the way we want. Even our dreams often reveal how deeply runs this illusion. When we cannot be conquering heroes by day, at least, we think we can by night. There we appear as a misunderstood genius or the rescuer recognized too late by those who criticized us.
This illusion sometimes puts us on the road to a frantic search for self hood and self-fulfillment. We want to be “true to ourselves”—or at least to our self-made image. We become so concerned with our identity that we preoccupy ourselves with our own unique distinction. We worry about how we are doing in comparison with others. This is the illusion that sets us on the road to competition, rivalry, and even violence. For it makes us conquerors who will fight for our place in the world, even at the cost of others. This illusion leads some to nervous activism, propelled by the belief that anyone is only the result of his or her work. The same illusion leads others to introspection with the assumption that they are their own deepest feelings.
Awareness of how such illusions grip us often comes through crisis or hardship. In the face of a great pain or inescapable grief, we realize how little we control our lives, how feebly our protests change reality. Something happens to make us realize we can let go of a cherished ambition, bid farewell to a friend, or accept an ailing body. We relinquish the hope of a marriage or career recognition that seems out of reach. We look in the mirror and admit that we are not strikingly handsome, not always the center of conversation at parties, not always brilliant. And we allow ourselves to remember that not only does life include losses, but in the end we will in the some sense lose everything because we will, inevitably, die. At the same time, we sense that there may be more to life than life.
Such discoveries remind us of our humble place in the scheme of things. They keep us from self-aggrandizement. Perhaps our need to hold life loosely is no more evident than in our daily relationships. Loving someone means allowing the other person to respond in ways you have no control over. Every time you engage yourself in an intimate, loving way with someone else you become at least partly subject to the exhilaration of hearing another person’s yes or the disappointment in his or her no. The more people you love, the more pain you may experience. For the great mystery of love is that while it can be received, it can also be rejected. Every time you love you enter into the risk of love.
And in this, we look at the story of Jesus. Time and again in the NT we read the phrase ‘handed over’ to refer to Jesus and his followers. God handed his Son over for our sins. Jesus no longer was the One who preached, spoke, healed, took the initiative. What was done, was done to him. He was spit on, led to the cross, flagellated, crucified. The Word, the One through whom all is created, now becomes a victim of his own creation. That is what his death meant—being out of control, for our sakes, from great love.
Henri Nouwen – Turn My Mourning into Dancing
------
I am a richly blessed girl.
This process of letting go of what is behind to walk forward into the newness that is ahead is one of the most confusing seasons in my life.
It seems that there are many paradoxical truths that are streaming through my life. To heal you have must hurt, to let go you must embrace, to receive you must give.
But i am a richly blessed girl.
Its so much easier to deal with disappointment, heartache, and heartbreak on the days that i spend enough time just 'being' in the rest that comes from solitude with the Lord.
I was reading earlier today about how 'solitude' is viewed as a negative because of the connotation of loneliness attached with it. Lonely, by definition, has more to do with depressing feelings. Solitude by definition is 'to be alone' - simply to be separated.
My mentor pointed out to me a couple weeks ago how Jesus withdrew to be 'alone' with the Father...even when everybody was desperately looking for him out of their need.
Obviously both 'loneliness' and being 'alone' have to do with the absence of companionship, but it's strangely comforting to know that 'solitude' is a choice that can be made.
Prayer has been my life line (okay, my dog has been one too). It's teaching my exhausted heart to beat with enthusiasm because the life we have in Christ surpasses any heartbreak or disappointment. Promise!
I'm learning that really loving people is loving out of a heart that is energized by the Lord Jesus. That love allows for us to see others as fellow broken and beaten ragamuffins. When we love out of a heart that was loved first it releases us from the chains of expectation and the need to receive what we never readily give.
Loving from a heart that KNOWS it was loved first makes forgiveness much easier. I am the one that's been forgiven much - and therefore i can forgive regardless of crime committed against my fragile heart.
So i rest at peace tonight. The Lord is so much bigger than all of this. The plan is uncertain and road is going to be long, but i believe with everything in me the end will be worth the fight it took to get there.
Bitterness has nothing on me tonight. Praying for many blessings to fall on you tonight brt.
This is a season of discovery and recovery.
Life is a great adventure.
C.S Lewis wrote in the The Four Loves:
To love at all is to be vulnerable…If you want to make sure of keeping [your heart] intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries and busyness; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in the casket—safe, dark motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken—it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable….The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the danger of love is Hell.
In so many ways, the more we insist on control and the more we resist the call to hold our lives lightly, the more we have to deny the reality of our losses and the more artificial our existence becomes. Our belief that we should grasp tightly what we need provides one of the great sources of our suffering. But letting go of possessions and plans and people allows us to enter, for all its risks, a life of new, unexpected freedom.
It is our great illusion that life is a property to be owned or an object to be grasped, that people can be managed or manipulated. We sometimes try to establish a logic by which things must happen the way we want. Even our dreams often reveal how deeply runs this illusion. When we cannot be conquering heroes by day, at least, we think we can by night. There we appear as a misunderstood genius or the rescuer recognized too late by those who criticized us.
This illusion sometimes puts us on the road to a frantic search for self hood and self-fulfillment. We want to be “true to ourselves”—or at least to our self-made image. We become so concerned with our identity that we preoccupy ourselves with our own unique distinction. We worry about how we are doing in comparison with others. This is the illusion that sets us on the road to competition, rivalry, and even violence. For it makes us conquerors who will fight for our place in the world, even at the cost of others. This illusion leads some to nervous activism, propelled by the belief that anyone is only the result of his or her work. The same illusion leads others to introspection with the assumption that they are their own deepest feelings.
Awareness of how such illusions grip us often comes through crisis or hardship. In the face of a great pain or inescapable grief, we realize how little we control our lives, how feebly our protests change reality. Something happens to make us realize we can let go of a cherished ambition, bid farewell to a friend, or accept an ailing body. We relinquish the hope of a marriage or career recognition that seems out of reach. We look in the mirror and admit that we are not strikingly handsome, not always the center of conversation at parties, not always brilliant. And we allow ourselves to remember that not only does life include losses, but in the end we will in the some sense lose everything because we will, inevitably, die. At the same time, we sense that there may be more to life than life.
Such discoveries remind us of our humble place in the scheme of things. They keep us from self-aggrandizement. Perhaps our need to hold life loosely is no more evident than in our daily relationships. Loving someone means allowing the other person to respond in ways you have no control over. Every time you engage yourself in an intimate, loving way with someone else you become at least partly subject to the exhilaration of hearing another person’s yes or the disappointment in his or her no. The more people you love, the more pain you may experience. For the great mystery of love is that while it can be received, it can also be rejected. Every time you love you enter into the risk of love.
And in this, we look at the story of Jesus. Time and again in the NT we read the phrase ‘handed over’ to refer to Jesus and his followers. God handed his Son over for our sins. Jesus no longer was the One who preached, spoke, healed, took the initiative. What was done, was done to him. He was spit on, led to the cross, flagellated, crucified. The Word, the One through whom all is created, now becomes a victim of his own creation. That is what his death meant—being out of control, for our sakes, from great love.
Henri Nouwen – Turn My Mourning into Dancing
------
I am a richly blessed girl.
This process of letting go of what is behind to walk forward into the newness that is ahead is one of the most confusing seasons in my life.
It seems that there are many paradoxical truths that are streaming through my life. To heal you have must hurt, to let go you must embrace, to receive you must give.
But i am a richly blessed girl.
Its so much easier to deal with disappointment, heartache, and heartbreak on the days that i spend enough time just 'being' in the rest that comes from solitude with the Lord.
I was reading earlier today about how 'solitude' is viewed as a negative because of the connotation of loneliness attached with it. Lonely, by definition, has more to do with depressing feelings. Solitude by definition is 'to be alone' - simply to be separated.
My mentor pointed out to me a couple weeks ago how Jesus withdrew to be 'alone' with the Father...even when everybody was desperately looking for him out of their need.
Obviously both 'loneliness' and being 'alone' have to do with the absence of companionship, but it's strangely comforting to know that 'solitude' is a choice that can be made.
Prayer has been my life line (okay, my dog has been one too). It's teaching my exhausted heart to beat with enthusiasm because the life we have in Christ surpasses any heartbreak or disappointment. Promise!
I'm learning that really loving people is loving out of a heart that is energized by the Lord Jesus. That love allows for us to see others as fellow broken and beaten ragamuffins. When we love out of a heart that was loved first it releases us from the chains of expectation and the need to receive what we never readily give.
Loving from a heart that KNOWS it was loved first makes forgiveness much easier. I am the one that's been forgiven much - and therefore i can forgive regardless of crime committed against my fragile heart.
So i rest at peace tonight. The Lord is so much bigger than all of this. The plan is uncertain and road is going to be long, but i believe with everything in me the end will be worth the fight it took to get there.
Bitterness has nothing on me tonight. Praying for many blessings to fall on you tonight brt.
This is a season of discovery and recovery.
Life is a great adventure.
