Tag: letting go

Time to…let go

I have been thinking about Ecclesiastes 3, which talks about there being a ‘time for everything’, including death. But there is also ‘a time to keep and a time to throw away’ (v6) and that is what I am facing right now. 

While I know many people utilised the time during lockdown to blitz rooms in their homes that had become overfull with unnecessary clutter, our lockdown was more manic than our life is usually. And, as my husband is deep into DIY in our bathroom currently, we are not sorting through and throwing away anything – apart from damp and rotten wood, tiles and an old shower!

No, this time to keep and throw away is related to the earlier verse: ‘a time to be born and a time to die’ (v2). Although my mum died back in February, this is the first opportunity there has been to go and stay with my dad, so that I can help him sort through mum’s things.

I am sure there will be a mixture of emotions felt over the next few days and, while we may hold on to some things for sentimental reasons, in order to remember mum well, we will also need to make practical decisions and get rid of items that none of us can utilise.

As I’ve been thinking about going away, I’ve realised that this is the next stage in my grieving journey. It will necessitate another layer of letting go, as we package up clothes to take to charity shops. It will feel like losing another part of mum, and I know I will find it really hard. I hope I’ll be gentle on myself, and walk this next path with Jesus as I know he will be close by.

But I also think there is a letting go that most of us need to do in this time, as we are easing out of lockdown. We need to let go of the pressure we may be putting on ourselves to ensure things go back to ‘normal’ quickly – whatever normal was. 

We need to let go of the frustration we may feel because 2020 has certainly not been as we envisaged or hoped. Whatever control we thought we had over our lives has been shown up for what it really was – an illusion. Some of us will be struggling with that intensely. Perhaps it’s time to let go of the struggle and move towards acceptance…

Lockdown has also brought the best out in some people – but the worst in others. It may be that we’ve been on the receiving end of some of the worst. Perhaps it is time to let go of the pain that has been inflicted and any unforgiveness that has arisen in our own hearts as a result.

Reflection: Take some time before God to ask him whether there is anything that you need to let go of. You might want to bring those things before him and, in a symbolic act, when you are ready place your palms downwards to show that you are letting them go, out of your grasp. Then, again when you are ready, perhaps you could turn your palms upwards to receive whatever it is that God has for you today.

There’s a crack in my fishbowl

9781782641292I am delighted to welcome Gerard Kelly to my website as a guest blogger. A prolific poet/writer, he has just released his first novel, The Boy Who Loved Rain, a beautifully emotive book tackling huge issues: toxic family secrets, suicide, self-harming… As a pastor’s wife, I was intrigued to see how the central family would deal with the enormous crisis brewing in their lives – particularly as the father, a pastor, will not acknowledge their problems or seek help from outside the church. I was totally drawn into the novel, especially through the way Gerard portrayed the troubled teenager, Colom.

Politicians, entertainers, sports stars and other celebrities often talk of the pressures of living in the limelight. Work / life balance is hard to maintain and where they have families it is hard to establish any kind of normal rhythm for their children. They live in a fishbowl, visible to all. They are subject to constant judgements from those who look on – always ready to offer an opinion and all too often happy to see their idols fall.

My novel The Boy Who Loved Rain explores this fishbowl lifestyle through a different and very specific group of of people: the leaders of churches. Theirs is not a life of celebrity – it would be difficult to describe weekly sessions in the pulpit as ‘the limelight’ – but the pressures on their families are nonetheless real.

David and Fiona Dryden, church leaders and parents to the adolescent Colom, feel this pressure acutely, not least because the growth of their church has come from their acknowledged expertise in parenting. David in particular hands out advice quite publicly – saving marriages and keeping families together. All is not well, though, in the Dryden household. There are dark secrets not far below the surface, and the decision to keep them from the light only means the impending crisis will be deeper.

Renowned psychologist Paul Tournier in his book Secrets suggests that keeping a secret is the first step to becoming an individual. The second step, he says, is telling it. Colom, at fourteen, is on the cusp between the two, and the comfort that secrecy has brought him in childhood will not sustain him in his adult years. The question is whether his parents will have the courage, for the love of their son, to let light shine.

I’m intrigued by the dilemma faced by David and Fiona Dryden because this is my world. I’ve pastored churches and I’ve worked with others doing the same, and too often I’ve seen uncomfortable truths swept under the carpet. It doesn’t matter how successful your ministry is, or how well known you are for helping others: your children are your children and their needs will neither be defined nor be met by the success of your ministry. They need parents, not professionals, and if any role is a crash course in the power of truth-telling, it is parenting. I’ve made huge changes in my own life, including career decisions that on the surface seem foolish, when I’ve seen that the needs of my family are clashing with the demands of my role. My children, as they’ve grown, have become my teachers, and listening to them has been a hard-won but hugely rewarding discipline.

The Boy Who Loved Rain is about the battle to take adolescents seriously; to allow them to be the central actors in their own drama; to recognise that their journey and my journey are not one and the same. Adolescence is the period in which a child moves from being a passenger in someone else’s vehicle to learning to drive their own. Controlling parents, who love nothing more than having their hand on the wheel and assume that they will be making all the route decisions, don’t always take well to this transition. We have plans; goals; desires for our children’s lives: but it is not our job to deliver them. Only they can fight their battles; only they can live their life. Our job is to equip them; to set them on their way, but ultimately to free them to be the warriors their nature and their maker have designed them to be.

For families in the fishbowl, this process of freeing our children might mean a choice – of relationship over reputation; of family over fortune; of those we love over those we serve. In my experience, it is a choice worth making. Sometimes it is the only choice that will save our children’s lives – and our own.

The Boy Who Loved Rain is published by Lion Fiction. Thanks to them for the review copy and for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.