Letting Go With Purpose

 

Do you know anger? Anger that you swallow and feel tightly constricting your stomach, a constant tightness in the center of yourself that makes you want to wail loudly to the skies?

I struggle with such anger sometimes, and when I do, I can stuff it deep and refuse to release it or the anguish behind it. I’ve carried such heaviness for different seasons, and it wears on a life.

The anger in my case is triggered by hurt. I love deeply, and when someone I love hurts, I hurt. When I watch someone I love struggle, suffer or die while knowing his hurt could have been prevented, I downright seethe. I guess I allow rage to eat away at me because, somehow, I feel like I’m in control of rage. I’m afraid of unleashing despair, a hopeless darkness in response to lives that could have been better. The despair I refuse to unleash is bigger than I am. If I give in to it, I fear it will destroy me; I’ll have no control over anything. Having no control in the midst of despair terrifies me.

I want the people I love to live good lives, to experience joy, to know hope. But that doesn’t always happen.

I can’t control other people, even to keep them safe. I can’t control circumstances outside of my power. I’m in control of very little, if anything, other than my own choices. No one is.

And so I’m working on transforming my rage and black despair into mourning . . . something lighter. Grieving is letting go . . . a sad letting go.

I have to release those I love and myself to a higher power. And there, in that higher power, I see hope for us all.

Click here and drink in “My Hope is In You," performed by Aaron Shust.

“Jesus said: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”-John 8:12

This blog post is part of a series of writing (May 31-June 2012) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about holding on and letting go.   tbergland.blogspot.com