Catholic Hermit: Learn to Let Go

The Lord is emphasizing in this current phase, the crucial need to learn to LET GO.

It is paramount that I learn to let go of a whole host of variety of perceived needs and temporal aspects, or even to let go of what seems to the human view to be best in many situations and relationships.

Letting go requires self-discipline and increasing trust, faith, in God.  One must have faith enough to let go regardless how it might seem illogical or even not appropriate.  Yet, as we grow over the years, we must also learn to let go as pertains to our physical bodies as well as our temporal surroundings.

So it is that I am letting go of thoughts that I should try to get an outside drainage issue handled before fall and winter shift in weather to include rain storms.  I cast the nets in three directions, seeking help that in two of the cases, had been offered to me or agreed upon.  But the ones who agreed did not follow through, and I decided, helped by how odd that out of three, none came about, that my view needed to change.

That is when the impact of letting go came to the fore, of such matters as getting some potted items in the ground, or of being concerned with the mounded area of sand upon solid clay, with drainage toward two areas of the hermitage's foundation.  At least before surgery, I had some help as well as I myself worked some on getting some of the sand out, leaving a large hole in which some of the run-off can gather rather than all flowing toward the foundation.  And, I consider that the situation of improper run-off has been on-going for several years.  One more, will not matter, or if it does, then there are always solutions, such as homeowners insurance to help pay for damage.

As to asking again for assistance when the responses might be affirmative yet the persons not come, or the responses being mostly negative, or no response at all, the reality I face is that the Lord is allowing as such, and in addition is not providing me with the energy to keep asking.  I am exhausted with the fatigue of physical pain; and I also do not have energy to reach in.  Thus, the Lord is allowing the circumstances, and I am seeing the necessity of learning to let go, all the more, of temporal aspects, including people in the temporal.

I praise God for those He brings and has brought when I have been in need, and in the discerning, the need was that which God determined as most important or at least more so than others.  And I praise God for having me be available to people in their need, of which currently it has been for me to be able to pray for people who contact me for their prayer needs, or to email or talk over their situations of which they evidently find it of benefit or at least comment as such, that something or other, or my pointing to the spiritual good or solution, as being so helpful to them.

I also am thankfully able to pay for kindnesses done, or in cases when someone has refused remuneration, I usually can get them to take some money to pass on to someone in need or for them to donate to a favorite charity.  

When I consider just a little over a year ago, I was so financially bereft that I had to rely on private loans and someone other to put some costs on his credit card, or another to pay off my Visa bill for a month.  All the timing and all the help that the Lord provided from kindly others, allowed me to finish the Te Deum Hermitage in the nick of time and to relocate after having paid off many debts and also to financially gift people who helped me.

I learned to let go in that situation--to let go of many items that I sold off and of so much that I donated to charities and gifted people, as well.  I let go of being able to stay in what was finally a livable hermitage with gardens glorious profuse with beauty all about and the practical vegetable and fruit area, as well.  Loveliness abounded!  Yet I did not realize in God's timing, and if not for my financial destitution at that point, had I not relocated, I'd have been in serious trouble with my spine being so terrible, beyond my fathoming.

There has been much letting go since, but nothing to the degree that I am now consciously realizing as a lesson of crucial letting go that God is teaching and directing me to learn to accept and to do.  Let go!  

Letting go begins as a thought and a feeling; it is an act of mind and heart, and then very deeply moves to the soul where resides the intellect and will.  In the soul, the letting go takes on determination and reason for the good of letting go as a prudent and spiritual actions melded into oneness with God's will and His purpose for our spiritual growth superseding the temporal.

All this interior grasp of letting go then enables us to do so, to simply let go of our ways, our thoughts, our reasoning as to what should be good or best, and why, of things and people and ideas, and to wait upon the Lord to show us His reasoning, His way, His what and why of things, people, and ideas of which He presents usually in situations, for us to sooner or later catch on:  We are to let go.  

I'm at this point of realizing that He is trying to teach me, that He is imploring me, to go against what I think makes sense or seems to be for the best and instead to let go.  I'm just learning now to accept this view, this instruction, and to consider the faith that I must embrace in order to do the letting go.  It rather feels like stepping off a diving board or maybe more a cliff outcropping, not knowing what is beneath, or how far the distance between what is more known and familiar, to what is unknown other than by faith, I trust that God knows, and He will provide and be there with me, always, no matter what or whom is let go.

I do grasp the essence of the reality and the maybe-aspect of letting go, for maybe when I let go, He will fill in with what is far better for me, for others, for situations.  Definitely, the crucial learning of letting go will open means and ways of God's filling in with what and how and why of the spiritual realm which always means growth and closer relationship with Christ, but also might include better aspects in the temporal realm, of whom and what He wants, and when, for me and for others.

It is the grandest of adventure into the unknown of yet another facet of God's will--this matter of simply letting go.  It's something little children learn when a parent tries to pry away something not healthy or safe that the child is determined to grip, to hang onto with stubborn might and will.  

Or it can be like the teen who is so sure of knowing what is best and the parent being not "with the times", or having never understood, or simply in the teen wanting to take the reins of decision making and living life free of interference.  Sometimes quite soon, or sometimes only after years of living out painful consequences, does the no-longer teen realize or maybe even struggle to admit, that letting go of self-will and having accepted the prudence and concern of the parent, would have saved much anguish.  

But pride is a direct hindrance to the crucial lesson of letting go.  We find it in the elderly who on their death beds, seemingly defy dying in ways that medical professionals are amazed at the dying person's will to live despite incredible suffering, fighting to avoid death despite how foolish to hang on to decrepit body unable to enjoy temporal existence or sometimes to hang on for someone among the living even though the dying person is unable to provide benefit to those who do not want the person to let go, or for whom the person does not want to let go.

Letting go is mostly, though, an interior grace that if recognized, accepted, and appreciated, will free the body, mind, heart, and soul to enjoy the adventure in faith and hope and love that God provides once we do let go.

As for me, I'm grateful that the physical, mental, and emotional pain of temporal has me at a point of being too fatigued to keep hanging on, to keep reaching in, to keep striving to do other than the bare necessities of temporal responsibilities.  

Hanging on, especially to that which keeps pulling back or retreating, or simply is not "happening", all the more to showing itself to me as utterly ridiculous!  What have I been thinking?  Why have I been hanging on?  When will I the faith in God enough to trust His wisdom and will as being far and beyond more than anything other than omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent?

And, learning to let go makes life far more joyful.  Letting go, following, taking Christ's yoke makes all so much easier, simpler, a relief and a readying for serving God, loving in the Spirit, living in His Real Presence with the potential of inspiring others, of being aspirational instead of a burden, a hanger-on enslaved to the temporal that is ever passing away.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Lord, teach me well in Thy ways and means and will of letting go!