By
Theresita Joseph
About a month ago I was invited to a small worship night organised by a friend. Music has always played an incredibly special part
of my life, and only recently have I begun to appreciate both its beauty and
power in enhancing my relationship with God.
In one of the songs we sang through the
night, the lyrics ‘I will climb this
mountain with my hands wide open… there is nothing I hold onto’ struck a
chord with me. In prayer, I found myself
singing ‘I hold onto You’, without at
the time being aware of what the actual lyrics were. Whilst opening up to
worship through this seemingly small line, it also opened my eyes to an aspect
of life I have always struggled with – holding
onto God during the hard times of
letting go.
The
fear of letting go
I’m the sort of person who didn’t get a new
phone for years because I thought it meant I would lose all of my Whatsapp chat
history (Nb: I’ve now figured out how
chat back up works). Despite the countless number of friends who persistently
told me it was the worst reason to hold onto my shabby memory-storage full-iPhone
4s, I still maintained that the conversations and photos I had stored in there
were more precious to me than any new updated version I could trade it in for.
Why? Because they were my personal time travelling device. For the late nights
when I couldn’t fall asleep, or situations when I had time to kill, I would
read back over those old chats and laugh over the way things had changed, or
smile over moments with people I had forgotten.
Without this already making me sound too
sad, the point I’m trying to make is that there are several things in our lives which each of us struggle to let go of; be it friendships, hobbies, possessions
or plans. Their existence gives us a sense of control and stability in our
lives, and with time they begin to shape our identity. An unexpected or sudden
loss of any of these things can therefore quickly set us back and instinctively
cause us to question ‘why’; and without a valid explanation we often struggle to
accept them or move on. At such times of hardship, it can feel challenging to
turn our dependency to God and let go, especially when the future we had in
mind is no longer clear. However, with time, I am beginning to see more clearly
how it is in these times that God wants
us to hold onto Him more tightly than ever, and form our own memories with Him
that last a lifetime.
‘He is before all things, and
in Him all things hold together’
Fear of loss
One of my first wake up calls to confronting
my own personal fears of loss came a couple of years ago during what was
supposed to be the end of a blissful family holiday to Sri Lanka. Being an only
child in a country with only a few other relatives, my parents have always been
my rock, and the thought of losing either one of them remained my greatest
nightmare from a young age. That nightmare appeared to become a reality when I
was abruptly woken up on the morning of our flight home to hear that my mother
had collapsed in the bathroom, and had very badly hit her head.
Rushing out of my room, I saw her laying on
the ground, unconscious, with my dad by her side trying to shake her awake and
the nurse panicking if there was any internal bleeding. Like in a film, the
life that could lie before me slowly began to play before my eyes; watching my
father’s heartbreak, dropping out of medical school, leaving England to be closer
our relatives abroad. And for losing my mother; all the times that I didn’t reach
out to her enough, show her how much she meant to me, or have the experience to
learn from her faith suddenly hit me, and I was terrified that my greatest horror
could be occurring in such an unexpected and unplanned way.
Amidst the fear, anger, and confusion I
felt, I turned to see a picture of the Divine Mercy hanging in the corridor
wall, with the line ‘Jesus, I trust in
You’ written beneath. For many years, my faith had never been concrete or
something that changed how I lived or what I wanted, and my prayer life had
been virtually non-existent. But in that moment, I remember fixating my eyes
upon His, and through the blur of my tears making my most fervent request that
He could hear my plea to not take my mother away from me. Not now. Not this
way. Not us.
By a miracle, my mother came around slowly,
however that evening my grandma fell incredibly ill and had to be admitted to
hospital. In the craziness of those few days, I came to realise how my faith was now the only thing I could depend
on. All the plans I had made were now uncertain, and being miles away from
home with challenging time differences and wifi opportunities to talk to my
friends, all I could ask them to do was
pray. And within those few days, God
provided all I needed. My grandma was discharged the day before our
rescheduled return flight home, and my mother was fit to fly.
I remember sitting on the plane back home
and pondering over how just maybe, the whole drastic turn of events could have
been part of God’s plan. If my
mother hadn’t fallen, we wouldn’t have missed our flight, and would have left
my grandma alone at a time when it was most important for us to be there. And
through the drama, it completely shifted my outlook on what was important to
me. Realising how insignificant my relationship with God had been in my life, I
knew that things had to change, starting from then.
‘Trust
in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all
your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight’ Proverbs 3: 5-6
Handing
over to God
My journey in faith has come a long way
since, although I am still making baby steps. Right now, I am in the process of
letting go of my first relationship with someone who played a very special and
important part of my past year. Whilst my experience of feeling loved and cared
for exploded, I constantly wrestled with my gut feeling that something was
missing.
Despite this, I still found it easier to turn to this relationship
rather than to God during various emotional and physical challenges I faced, and
with time I felt more disconnected from my prayer life or views on chastity. By
the time of the break up, I was left feeling confused, saddened, and aware of
my own personal withdrawal symptoms from the love I was used to. I constantly
questioned God why He had put someone into my life that I had to distance
myself from; changing from being the first person I opened my heart to, to now
the person I had to act like a stranger with. More than loss of a relationship,
I found myself grieving the loss of a best friend, and it was, and still is,
incredibly painful.
I’m grateful to have had this experience
with someone who was consistently understanding, and ironically one of the most
beautiful moments we shared was going to the chapel together for the first time
to pray about the end of our relationship. I realised that the struggles of the
relationship was something I’d kept separate from God, and bringing them before
Him could have been one of the most encouraging steps of faith I have yet
experienced. It allowed me to feel like I was handing over the relationship to God, rather than simply letting go, and
has given me the opportunity to pray not only for the growth in my faith, but
in his also. Trusting that God knows what is best both of us, and has a bigger
and better plan than we can imagine, is one that only through prayer, hope and faith
I can learn to accept. I truly believe that God puts certain people in our life
for a reason, and regardless of how long or short their presence was, the
impact they can have on our journey towards Him can be monumental.
“For know the plans I have for
you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to
give you hope and a future.”
Finally…
take a dive in with your faith
One last thought. Whilst the whole basis of
this post has been triggered following an experience I had with worship, I’m
not going to lie in saying that I’ve always found it the most comfortable or
natural experience. This summer I went to my first Youth 2000 festival in
Walsingham, and at the start I remember experiencing the fear of whether it was
all just too much for me. At one talk about worship however, a particular
analogy given by a Franciscan friar stuck with me. He likened the experience of
embracing worship to the decision between standing on the edge of the shore and
feeling the cold water touch your feet, or diving straight in from the edge of
a cliff. The outcome is ultimately the same: the water is freezing, and you
want to go in at some point. You can either choose to tip-toe your way in and
experience the changes bit by bit until you are finally submerged, or you can
embrace both the uncertainties and thrills and go straight for it, head first.
‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me
with all your heart’ Jeremiah 29:13
Faith, and the courage to step out of your
comfort zone into seeking God, is exactly the same as the latter option. No matter what stage of faith you are at,
He is a father that waits patiently for you to seek refuge in His own arms, and
once you are there, He will never let you go. Coming back to the original
lyrics of the song that triggered me, the concept of climbing a mountain with
outstretched hands is incredibly powerful. It tells us that in moments of life
when we go through our own personal challenges of change or loss, whilst it
feels easier to try and cling on to the tangible roots of this world, the greatest strength we can receive is
through surrendering over control to Him. None of us can predict what will
happen in our life, nothing is constant; except that love and the promise He
offers for each one of us. It is this
knowledge that in the strongest of tides that try to shake us, our faith should be what remains anchored,
as it is the only thing that matters.
Let go, and let God in.
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