Wow it’s been a minute.
As much as I love blogging, and using social media to blog, I took a huge step back last year. I needed to focus on rediscovering myself and my passions in life. By doing so I traveled to many states, got on a plane for the first time in twenty years, saw the desert for the first time, fell in love with hiking, focused on my mental and physical health and started taking classes for paralegal studies.
As 2022 was coming to an end I really felt like God was telling me that the theme for 2023 would be “letting go”. I, like many people, do not like change. I also love to think I can control everything and everyone in my life. I really wrestled with this and tried to ignore it and searched for anything else that God could be telling me but the words letting go always came back. I honestly wasn’t too thrilled about already knowing what my challenge and a huge part of my growth for 2023 would be.
To be honest I kept myself up at night wrestling with this reality and God wasted absolutely no time in starting this growth period for me. On January first I was sitting in church and 4 questions were asked but two hit me like a ton of bricks.
- Who do you need to let go of?
- What is a habit you need to break?
Both resonating with letting go but in different ways, and with very prominent situations in my life. In 2022 I tried SO hard to hang on to friendships that were no longer serving a purpose in my life because “they have been such a good friend for so long”. I also had various ideas in my head on how I felt certain situations needed to go and I clung on tightly to those ideas and tried to manipulate those situations to prove my ideas were the best ideas. I genuinely let go of a few people/situations and they came flooding back into my life, further making me believe that letting go and not being in control were not necessary.
January first was not just the start of the new year but the start of my journey of letting go. The first three days of January were full of situations where I knew God was slapping me across the head and saying it was time and I could no longer lie to myself that I could control the situations and people that were included, including situations that do not even directly involve me but I still feel an obligation to try to control. A lot of tears were shed and a lot of questioning God and his plan followed. God wasted no time and honestly I was so overwhelmed with it all happening literally day one, I just did not understand why God would do that to me knowing how hard of a lesson this was going to be for me.
After those first few days I honestly isolated myself and just tried to sort through my thoughts and feelings. I spent a lot of time in the gym and focused on easing myself into letting go of emotional situations and focused on physical things. I went to my closet and got rid of 5 large bags of clothes and instead of fear or sadness I felt freedom. Then it hit me, if I can feel freedom from letting go of physical things weighing me down and cluttering my life, what can happen if I let go of friendships, situations, and relationships that are weighing me down because I am trying to control them. Getting rid of physical things in my life made the emotional stuff I was identifying to let go seem a lot less scary. Once I was able to get rid of 5 bags of clothing I felt the urge to start decluttering other things. Book shelves, knick knacks, text books and I still have so much to go through. I realized that letting go doesn’t have to be a heartbreaking experience, increase my anxiety to unhealthy levels or be associated with a bad situation.
I can’t control everything and everyone, I cannot control every aspect of my life because life does not work that way. What I can do instead, is focus on the freedom I feel when I take a situation out of my hands and give it to God. The freedom of trying to put a friendship in a certain box that I feel it fits in. The freedom of accepting certain relationships for what they are and not focusing on controlling the relationship for what I want it to be. Letting go of situations my friends are in and realizing I cannot force them to get out of the situation or see it for what it is.
So, if you are like me and really struggle with letting go, I encourage you to dig deep and embrace the idea of letting go. It is not an easy task and I do not want to downplay it as this is something I have struggled with since highschool. What I can promise you is that after the tears fall, the dust settles, and you adjust to your life learning to be okay to not be in control you really will feel a whole new type of freedom that you have not felt before.
I am always here for any of you, strangers or friends if you find yourself in this same place and need someone to talk or cry to. Letting go can feel lonely at times but please know, you are not alone.
Taia Jo 