A Time to Let Go

My wife Gemma and I both feel that we are entering a new season in our lives. In many ways that has been brought on by the recent death of my Mum. Suddenly, now that both my parents have died, the main reason for our relocating to the East of England nearly six years ago has gone. We feel that the time may be coming to move from our present home, but at the moment we have no idea where we might move to.

Perhaps a sign for me personally to be ready for change was to feel recently that I should give some things away to charity that I had previously been reluctant to give up. One of those things was a tandem bike that Gemma and I bought with some money given to us as a wedding gift twenty-one years ago. We’ve had enjoyable rides together over the years, especially in the early years of our marriage, but have used the tandem less and less, as time has passed. It was hard to give that bike up because of all those memories, but also because I cherished the hope that we would ride it again as before.

Among other things that found their way to a local charity shop were Gemma’s and my roller skates. We purchased those skates after we began visiting a local roller rink, a few years after we married. For me, then in my fifties, it meant learning to skate properly for the first time in my life. We used to go to the rink midweek, during the daytime, and we often had the whole rink to ourselves. Just as with our tandem bike, I had held on to the dream of us once again enjoying the freedom of circling a roller rink together, as we did during those early years of our married life.

My experiences above of letting go of our tandem and our roller skates perhaps seem a bit trivial, but in both cases produced quite strong emotions in me. It’s been a reminder for me that, when the Lord asks us to let go of something, it’s often to free us to move on into something new.

Perhaps there are things in your life at the moment that the Lord would want you to hold on to very tightly, promises yet unfulfilled, visions placed in your heart by Him. But, perhaps also, there are things that He is prompting you to let go of and release into His hands. Things such as pain, grief, wrong attachments to people, or possessions, may have become weights which are hindering you from running the race of faith that He’s set before you.