Letting Go

Right now, I find that in two areas of my life, I have really struggled with letting go of my own self-centered thoughts and being centered in the present.  The first area of my life that I am struggling with letting go is my relationship with Christ.  Last month, I applied for an internship at the UW-Milwaukee library.  I built up my hopes that I would get this part time job and be able to leave the career that I have been in for 11 years behind.  I was ready to move on. 

I felt disappointed, frustrated and betrayed. According to my timetable this was it, let’s go!  But it was not in God’s timetable. I felt upset with God.  He knows how I feel about my job.  Why was He leaving me stuck here?  So I decided that I was going to dig in my heels and do things my way, I’d show Him! I did not even stop to think that my timetable and God’s were different; it did not occur to me that I should just trust that this is where he wants me to be at this exact moment.

In the past week, I have begun to read The Purpose Driven Life by Pastor Rick Warren.  As I started to work through the chapters in the book, I realized that I had lost my perspective.  I was focusing too much on myself and missing the bigger picture.  I was fighting God, wasting a lot of time and energy in the process. So I made a decision, I am going to trust God and stop fighting Him.  If he wants me to be where I am right now, then I am going to accept that fact and try my hardest.  I want to glorify His name.  I am going to trust that Jesus loves me and knows what is best for me.  This will not be easy for me to do on a daily basis, but I am done fighting.  God will do what is in His will when he is ready.

I will be entering my second semester in the LIS program at UW-Milwaukee.  I went back to school, because I am training for a career that is more compatible with my talents and temperament, then the one I have now.  There is no guarantee that I will land a job in this new field, but I have faith that God has guided me to this path for a reason.  If it is His will, this will happen on His timeline, not mine.  I have to surrender this part of my life to Christ, let him take control and be a part of my professional life every day.

There is a part of me that wants to continue to resist and want things on my timetable, which is a mistake that many people and Christians make.  In our arrogance we think that we know better than God what is right for us. In the process, forgetting or not caring how much he loves and wants the best for us.  Most of my life I have seen surrendering or letting go of control of something as a weakness. However, there is a passage in Pastor Warren’s book, where he talks about letting go as strength not a weakness.  Letting go and trusting someone else’s love be it Jesus or my wife for example show’s how strong a person is, not how weak.  Any person can be stubborn and try to live life their way; Jesus modeled the ultimate strength when he sacrificed his own life, for the whole of humanity.  Christ through his example showed that sacrificial living is not something for the weak minded, but the strong hearted.