Letting Go

September 22, 2003

It was a cool August afternoon as I trudged down the gravel road toward the cabin alone. It was beginning to get dark and I breathed deep the fresh Canadian air, glancing up at the gray sky. I thought about all the things she had said to me about letting go and trusting God. All the time, I thought I’d been helping her by listening to her pain. But as I listened, I’d applied her words to myself

I know no one believes you can be in love when you are thirteen, but I know what love is. I know how I chose to care for him, how I couldn’t even breathe if he touched my hand. And now he had been out of my life for 2 years, still, desperately, I clung to my memories of him.

I’m sure she’ll never understand the impact her words made on my life. How different I would be if it weren’t for her. No matter how many times I tell her, she’ll never grasp at the deeper meaning of all the things she told me. So much is yet ahead; I don’t know the future I am now able to accept. But I do know one thing. That beautiful afternoon in Canada, as I sifted mentally through my friend’s heart spilling out into mine, gazing into the endless, darkening sky, something happened to me.

I took my first step in letting go.