Do you hope things would be different? Can you accept your life as it is?
Life doesn’t always go as planned, does it? There are many situations we wish wouldn’t happen and sometimes we find ourselves hoping and praying that things would be different? It’s not easy to let go of our own hopes, desires, and wishes. To release something you want or believe you need for survival can be frightening.
One of the hardest things to do is to let go of the way things use to be.
A child weaning itself from its mother is a picture of the necessity of letting go. The child eventually understands it cannot have what it wants and releases its grasp from the mother. It’s not a pretty picture. There is lots of crying but eventually, the child will accept the fact and detach itself.
We face similar struggles. Our life suddenly becomes different and we’re hungry for the way things were. The change can be so traumatic that we think we’ll die. We aren’t accustomed to letting go.
Anytime we lose something, we begin the process of letting go, adjusting, and recovering. There are many things we attach ourselves to that have been a source of joy and support. When these are gone we begin to look for other ways to fill our need.
My mother-in-law was a great example of how to let go. At the age of 30, she had her fourth child and she was living her dream as a young Amish wife and mother. Her baby girl was six weeks old when she was rushed to the hospital with a gull stone. She had surgery which turned into a life and death situation. At one point the family was called in to say goodbye to their mother. My husband, who was two and a half, can remember taking a little yellow flower to the hospital and holding it to her nose.
After 12 days of being in a coma and fevers higher than the fever-glass could record she opened her eyes. What the doctors called a miracle was also the beginning of a lifelong struggle of letting go. Her fever had burned out all of her motor skills and left her with no muscle mass or the ability to do anything on her own. Her mind was sharp and her will was strong, but what was would never be again.
Instead of being a mother to her children she watched others take care of her baby and three young children. Instead of sitting at the dinner table with her family, she was in bed being fed by a caregiver. Instead of doing the things she enjoyed – baking, cooking, sewing, and gardening – she only wished things were the way they used to be. She longed for the days that had passed.
Her plan was to have a large family, as is the custom in the Amish culture, but there would be no more babies. She struggled and fought hard to simply learn how to feed herself, dress and walk on her own.
It took years of effort and she never regained all of what was lost. She experienced lots of depression but continued to make life as good as it could be for her family. As she and I talked about life and living with the losses she experienced I saw the beauty of her strength and acceptance of the things she could not change.
She had a motto on her kitchen wall, the well-known prayer:
“Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”.
She lived her entire adult family life accepting life “the way it is”. The process of letting go eventually produced a life of peace within. She was one of my very favorite people. Her acceptance of life’s experiences gave me courage when I needed to accept life as it is. It gave me the courage to let go of the way things were or the way I thought things should be.
Can you accept the fact that you will never have some things in life you want? What is it that you are fiercely holding on to and simply cannot let go?
