The Grace In Letting Go

Life became ever so much easier when I finally accepted that I would befriend life! I would embrace its unfoldings and twists and turns with grace (sometimes not so gracefully) and with acceptance (and as little whining as possible). I recently came across this quote and immediately thought of how I would share it with you. “There is a great difference between defending life and befriending it. Defending life is often about holding on to whatever you have at all cost. Befriending life may be about strengthening and supporting life's movement toward its own wholeness. It may require us to take great risks, to let go, over and over again, until we finally surrender to life's own dream of itself.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

There is so much truth in this quote. When we are defending life we stick our heels in, we grab a hold and don’t want to let go and we justify and reason and excuse our way into holding on even tighter. Often this is done because we are afraid of the unknown. We would prefer staying in the comfort of even our dissatisfaction, boredom or disappointment. Sometimes we are scared we will fail. Sometimes we fear being judged. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are afraid.

But the act of releasing is what opens the door to the options, the choices and the moments for us to have the life we are intending to have. And isn’t that really the point? Sometimes we will have to suffer or feel loss, sometimes we do have to face fears, and sometimes we do have to screw up! But that is part of the big picture too! Those times are supposed to happen, they hold our lessons, our gifts or even our inspirations! They are the seeds waiting to burst forth in our personal garden. We need to stop stamping on them to keep them buried!

Awakening to the beauty of our dream in our real world is possible. We just have to learn how to do it. And if it is not modeled for us, it may feel awkwardly strange. If we have never been introduced to the importance of the letting go of control, we may not think we know how, but we do, innately, we do. Our inner truth, that little nudge you get when you are not being truthful with yourself or when you are making excuse after excuse is waiting to help you along, step by step. After a few attempts at letting go and surrendering, we begin to get better at it and feel a little less unnerved by it. And once we begin to see the beauty of it, the difference it makes in our lives and the way it impacts the essence of who we are….well, then there is a lovely relationship of graceful acceptance that enters your day.

Blessings ~ Lisa Meade ©COPYRIGHT 2013 Lisa Meade