Letting Go

I recently cuddled up on the half of my bed that isn't strewn with piles of clean clothes waiting to be put away (Has anyone figured out the length of time it takes to have someone come and put them away? I've been waiting for a while and nobody seems to be coming) in order to watch what once was one of my favorite shows: Grey's Anatomy.  I figured it had been about a year since I watched an episode and since I used to devote long stretches of time, many consecutive hours actually, I ought to catch up.

Here's the thing though: I didn't like it. The plot line coming down from the cliff hanger I left off on was thinly addressed but mostly overlooked in favor of more drama to set up for the next one.  Characters that once jumped off the screen and into my daily repertoire of conversation topics morphed into vapid stick people renditions of actual people.  I found myself confused as to why I spent so much time with something that meant so little to me now, and I realized that the difference was time. I had gone on with my life and was no longer in the throes of obsession over what was happening in the Grey's universe, and I was able to let go.

Letting go isn't always that easy though.

I spent the last 16 weeks planning and preparing as I rounded out my college experience and made my way through student teaching, hoping to come out alive and in one piece at the end, though I would have settled for one of the two.  Turning in my final paper and heading towards the coast on a week-long California trip the day that I finished was the break I had been subsisting off of during those final dragging moments of any taxing experience.

And taxing it was.  People were constantly asking where I was going from here, so I constantly had to be thinking about graduation, a career, marriage, was I moving, did I have any interviews lined up, will I be pursuing my Master's, etc. I didn't realize how exhausted I was becoming until I had a conversation with a close mentor of mine during my California trip that, through some tears and general blubbering on my part, led to one end. Where am I? Not where am I going, not where have I been, but where am I right now? Jesus wants all of us. Everything we've got. All the strength and devotion we have and all of the tears and aches we bring.  He wants the victories and the defeats, the highs and the lows, the small things and the big ones, too.

I had lost something important, and so I had been grasping at everything I could to anchor myself while telling myself in the back of my cacophonic mind that Jesus was there when I needed Him. I had lost control and that pushed me to attach myself to any semblance of control I could get my hands on. I had brought so much on myself to try and organize and manage and I was so bent on manifesting my own destiny through sheer will power and determination, that it led to me hoarding responsibility.  Speaking with someone outside my situation illuminated all the empty towers I had built around myself and made me seriously look at the foundation of who I am.  It took many hours of reflection and debate with myself and others and countless tears and compromises, again with myself and others, to get to where I am now and to agree to release all that I held on so tightly to.

I don't know what's going to happen from here, so if I can just answer some of the questions that always come around the beginning of wedding planning season and tune you in to my most recent episode, this is what I've got: I don't know where I'll work or live in six months time, I'm not planning on getting married this year, I haven't figured out my career, and I'm taking my life one moment at a time. To get back to somewhere I know I want to be, I'm letting go.

I ended the night, and the subsequent nights after, with this: I am here. That was it. It was all I could say without completely collapsing into a spiral that led me nowhere productive. So no Bible verses this time, no rumination on Jesus' teachings or words, no proverbial advice going forward, except this: Where are you?