Letting Go For Dear Life

By John Stallings


The other evening when we were watching the election returns, I witnessed a sad sight.

Eighty year old Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter was defeated by Joe Sestak. I don’t mention this from a political, but rather a human perspective.

Specter’s loss will be endlessly examined in the days & weeks to come, as will other losses. As for me, Specter’s situation had to do with the perils of switching parties in an anti-incumbent national environment. He was a living, breathing embodiment of the traits the voters seem to be fed up with these days.

I mention Specter only because of the look he & his wife had on their faces at their concession appearance & speech. There will be many more of these expressions on faces of individuals from both parties in the coming months. This elderly couple looked & acted as if they’d been forced to pass by the coffin of their only child who’d been held for millions of dollars in ransom & then killed. As they walked away it seemed as if their legs would hardly carry them.

Specter had been a Washington insider/elected official for thirty years & he had been an elected official, counting local office for forty years- all tolled. This is just one man’s opinion but the reality may be that after the smoke clears & they have time to process the verdict of the voters, this couple will be happier & possibly healthier.

Still I wondered about them as I saw defeat slip its cold arms round about their shoulders. I felt for them as I’m sure many others did. It has to be tough to let go after all the years in public office. Many of us know what it’s like to be forced, for one reason or another to let go. To let go when it’s not exactly our choice & walk away isn’t’ all that easy, but it’s one of life’s “required courses.”

LETTING GO

A father takes his five year old son to the bus stop for the first day of school. His hair has been trimmed. His shirt has been tucked in one final time. He has a new jacket & a brand-new back pack. Just over the hill a big yellow bus appears. “Now don’t be afraid,” Dad says, trying not to show his own fear. They hug. They exchange goodbyes. He climbs up the steps. They wave again. And then Dad gets in the car to follow the bus. Have to make sure my son gets to school alright. It’s hard to let go.

I remember when my wife left to drive our oldest daughter to Louisiana to go to college. When the car pulled out of sight, I went into my daughter’s room & lay down on her water-bed. I looked on the walls of her room & saw memento’s she had framed. One was a souvenir I brought her from a ministry trip to Hawaii. The thought hit me that my daughter was so proud of her father’s trip to Hawaii, that she cherished it as much as if she’d gone on the trip with me. I was deeply touched.

You guessed it; I started mopping tears from my eyes as I lay there on her bed. Then the worst thing that could have happen, happened. The phone rang. That was before the days of “caller I.D” so we just answered every time the phone rang. I shouldn’t have answered, because I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t talk. It was a local pastor’s wife who wanted to ask about a coming city-wide meeting our church was co-operating with. She said, “Oh, brother Stallings, what’s wrong?” I apologized to the dear lady. In the interest of full disclosure, I told her the whole story, whereupon she began to talk about how sweet it was for a father to feel that way about his daughter. I’m sure you know how it is, if not you will someday. It’s so hard to let go.

We had a case here in Florida that was publicized globally. A family was divided because a young woman was on a feeding tube & had been since her brain stopped functioning fifteen years ago. The son-in-law said unplug it but her parents said leave it in. It gave the politicians an opportunity to preen for votes. The Supreme Court sided with the son-in-law. The son-in-law is made to look like another Scott Peterson for wanting to let her go but a bunch of people who never met the wife were having a hard time letting her go.

In so many ways you & I can dwell in the drama of loss. We lose a job; a friend moves away, a relationship dies. A place that holds a lot of fond memories gets torn down. A co-worker retires & doesn’t come back. There may be no more difficult task for us as human beings than letting go. To be perfectly candid I never did “letting go” very well but I always had to let go anyway. We all do. How can we pull that off? How can we maintain our composure while letting go of someone or something we love? If you & I are really honest we have to admit that most of the things that have been taken away left covered with our claw marks.

Turning loose can be as big an ordeal as most of us will ever face. We all will have to turn loose at some point in our lives although what we’re turning loose of will be different for each one of us. My point is-we have to wrestle with letting go of something or someone at some point in our journeys. And letting go can be hard. However, unless we come to grips with it, we will not be able to grow.

There is a freedom that comes from accepting that the best we can do for the moment is to roll with life’s punches. Many times it’s fear that enters the equation when trouble comes to us. Experience has taught me that people tend to cope better at times when it seems their whole world is falling apart than they do when something small has gone wrong in their lives. The reason for this is that we don’t blame ourselves when something of tremendous magnitude happens to us. Consequently, we don’t have the fear factor that others will blame us. In times of crisis we let go for dear life- in order to move on, holding on to the things we can & letting go of the things we must.

Many of us have stood beside dying parents. It takes a lot of courage although in another manner of speaking we have no choice at a time like this. The process requires letting go, ceding control that was never ours but God’s to exercise in the first place. We can do this begrudgingly, regretfully & plaintively or we can do it with grace. When it comes our time to go, we have the same choice.

The other night Juda & I watched a television special about the life & career of pianist & comedian Victor Borge. He was a multi-talented entertainer & raconteur. Something he said in an interview struck me. He said, “I sometimes think about death & it makes me terribly uncomfortable to think I’ll lie down & die someday & the world will go right on without me. This to me is unacceptable.” He said it partly in jest but you could see he was speaking from his heart about letting go of life & all the things about it he so cherished.

The hour ended with his death at 91. He died in his sleep after returning from a successful foreign tour. His son spoke about his father & explained how his dad was in those last years. He’d lost his much adored wife to cancer & frankly had never gotten over it. He wanted to go be with her. A lot could be said right here- but suffice to say, life had conditioned the old man to really want to let go. It seems that the very old are protected that way. They become as oblivious to the fact of their leaving as babies are of their arriving.

Most of the things we are anxious about indeed most of the things we fear in life lose their power over us when we simply let go of our fears, & trust in God. To learn this lesson is the beginning of real freedom.

I have read that when people were placed in prison camps during World War 11, when they’d lost everything except their lives; there was a joy & acceptance & even good humor among the prisoners that was hard to explain. Fear trades in comparisons,–Who has what? Who has more? But when all the markers of distinction have been swept away & everyone is in the same boat, there’s no guilt, comparison or social climbing. The only thing people have is their lives & one another, of all else they’ve had to let go.

KARL WALENDA

I witnessed Walenda’s death on T.V in the mid-seventies. Karl Walenda, the patriarch of the famous family of acrobats called “The flying Walenda’s” was killed because he couldn’t let go. It happened in Puerto Rico where Karl tried to walk across a wire stretched between two tall buildings. He’d done such feats many times before but on this particular day there was some disagreement in the family about whether he should go ahead with the show.

It was a gusty windy day & swirling gusts of wind were clocked at more than thirty knots between the high rise towers that Karl intended to cross. Though it was stretched tightly between the city’s two tallest buildings, you could see the high wire vibrating in the wind. Still, Walenda had never canceled a show before so he decided to go ahead.

As he inched along the wire, holding tightly the long balancing pole, a sudden gust hit his body & tilted him sideways. He struggled for balance & it was clear he was in trouble. Onlookers saw him fight for control then plunge to the street below, smashing into the roof of a car. When his body was examined it was discovered that his fingers were still tightly clutched around the balancing pole. He had carried it with him to his destruction.

High wire experts rely on the balancing pole for their survival. As Karl Walenda once put it himself, “The pole is your safe guard; you can almost always keep your balance with the pole.” Yet experts also say there are times on rare occasions when it’s necessary to let go of the pole & grab the wire. Of course when an acrobat lets the pole fall & grabs the wire it’s an admission of failure. So for a famed acrobat letting go even if it means saving your life can be exceedingly difficult. In his split second decision to hold on to that balancing pole in the wind, Karl Walenda made a fatal mistake. He held on to the pole all the way down, falling with it clutched in both hands, all the way to the ground. I’m sure his gravestone was in scripted with more uplifting words but it could have honestly read, “He just wouldn’t let go…. of the pole.”

MINISTERS WHO CAN’T LET GO

Sad to say, many pastors don’t know how to let go when they step down as the pastor of a congregation, much to the peril of all involved. Now I’m sure there have been cases when a pastor stops being the pastor & remains in or around the church & the results have been just fine. But this is an exception to the rule.

In over 50 years I can scarcely think of a single case I’ve witnessed where a pastor remained in a church after stepping down when a mess wasn’t made of things. IMHO, his work there is finished & if he’s not careful he’ll undo the good he’s done. This happens too often. There should be a “stay away” period for an extended length of time & there shouldn’t be “face to face” involvement with the church for a season so that they can all move on emotionally. After that there are ways a former pastor could still be a blessing to his former congregation, in returning for previously arranged funerals or weddings, revival meetings as well as former pastor appreciation days.

Many times a preacher will leave a church after several fruitful years there & destroy all the good he did by meddling in the church’s business, even from hundreds of miles away. A man who’ll do this in my view is very immature. Can we say, “Control freak?” There’s no law against it but a God called man should have more wisdom. You might wonder why a former pastor even if he’s retired shouldn’t just hang around the church even if he’s otherwise not meddling. I can think of several reasons.

It would be extremely difficult for the man & his former congregation to make the transition to his no longer being pastor. His very presence would make change very difficult as it would reflect on him if & when one of his programs was changed. It would also be very intimidating for the new pastor. The temptation for the former pastor to meddle would be huge especially if certain changes were not to the pastors liking, something that would almost inevitably be the case. When a pastor leaves a church he should say his goodbyes, move on, cut ties with the congregation & let go. God has other work for him which should be the reason he left in the first place. If he left under pressure, then it makes all the more sense for him to “get outta Dodge.” To do otherwise is usually a problem & has a detrimental affect on the church.

Since I’ve opened this Pandora’s Box, let me say that none of this means a pastor doesn’t still care for the church, & vice versa. It also doesn’t mean he can’t maintain friendships but they should be just that, only friendships & not cross the line to pastor/parishioner relationships. Certainly neither the former pastor nor the congregation should do anything to make the pastoral transitional period more complicated. Wouldn’t be prudent.

HANNAH-THE MOTHER WHO LET GO.

Centuries ago, Hannah prayed desperately for a son, then when he was three, took him to the Temple & gave him to God. Talk about letting go!! In Samuel’s case he stayed there in the care of Eli & went on to become a prophet in Israel. Think about this; Hannah entrusted her son to the care of a man who had clearly failed in raising his own sons to be faithful to God. I can imagine she sometimes wished she could take back control of her son’s development. But she let him go because she’d given him to God so she had to content herself with making clothes for him & an annual visit.

Letting go is a part of life. Loss, separation & giving away are themes that run through the biblical narrative. One of the first actions of man was that he was to leave his father & mother & cleave to his wife. God called upon Abram to leave his father’s country & house. When Paul, writing to the Philippians speaks of how Christ emptied Himself, He said, -Though He was in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself & became obedient to the point of death-even the death on a cross.

Jesus said to His disciples, If I go not away, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you.

TWO OF THE MOST BELOVED VERSES IN ALL THE BIBLE

The mission of this message is to help us with the challenge of letting go. I’ve pointed out the problem, now under God I’m going to share two verses that will be extremely helpful in getting to the answer.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6

Many of us memorized these two verses in Sunday School years ago. In any list of favorite verses they would rank at the top. These verses are striking in their simplicity. There is nothing difficult about them. They can be understood by the youngest Christian yet comforting to the oldest saint of God. They have been the hope & encouragement of countless multitudes of God’s people across the centuries. These words cling to the soul because they speak to a great need we all feel for strength & guidance.

These verses tell us the basis on which God’s peace & guidance will come. I’d like to stress five words & each of them gives tremendous help in “letting go & letting God.”

1. Trust.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Trust is a Hebrew word that carries the sense of putting your full weight on something. To trust in the Lord is to lay your whole weight on Him. When a Christian experiences loss, they are still in good hands.


2. Lean.

“Lean not to your own understanding.” Leaning is what you do when you walk with a cane or a walker because you’re unsteady. It’s used in the Old Testament for leaning against a tree or large stone. You lean on something when you’re not strong enough to stand alone. A lot of trust is involved in leaning. We find encouragement here to “let go.”


3. Understanding.

“Lean not on your own understanding.” This word refers to the mental powers you bring to a problem. It’s simply the decision-making ability that God has given you. This word is telling us not to lean exclusively on our ability to figure things out. Lean instead on the Lord. Rest you weight on Him! It’s this struggle to figure things out that drives men to drink or drugs. Place the hurts & disappointments of life in God’s hands where they belong. Trying to figure out what went wrong in a relationship can be crazy-making. Don’t go there. Trust in God’s wisdom.


4. Acknowledge.

“In all thy ways acknowledge Him & He will direct your paths.” Factor God into every thing you do. Bring God into every equation where your life is concerned.


5. Direct.

“…He will direct your paths.” There are multitudes of multiplicities of saints living & dead that can testify to the fact that God will lead the way if we’ll trust him.

Let’s look at the word “He.” Who is the “He” of Proverbs 3:6? The “He” is the God of the Bible. The God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob. The God of Moses. The God of Israel. The God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The God who spoke & a thousand million galaxies sprang into being. The God who has numbered the grains of sand. The God who knows the hairs on our head. The God who sees the sparrow when it falls. The God who holds the universe in His hands. That God, the Almighty, Transcendent God of the universe. He will direct your paths.

The God who says, “If you will but trust me I will take care of the details. Trust me. Rest your full weight on me. Acknowledge me in everything. And I, the God of the universe, will direct your paths.”

It may not be easy. It may not always be the way you want to go. It may not seem to be the shortest way.

But He will direct your paths. He promised—He will not fail! Rather than “hanging on for dear life,” lean on Him and,


LET GO FOR DEAR LIFE!


Blessings,


John