Free Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses by Pam Vredevelt

me, pictured my boys in my palms, and lifted them up to God. I told Him,
I place my boys in Your hands. They’re Yours. You take over. Please fulfill Your plans for their lives.
I realized that our job of helping direct their course was done, because they were not open to our input.
    “From that point on our expectations changed. We decided that we would do our best to love and support the boys in practical ways, but that the results were between them and God.”
    I thought about my friend’s words and the many times I too had placed my children in God’s hands. I’ll probably be praying those kinds of prayers until the Lord decides it’s time for me to come home. It hurts to see your kids struggle and take hard knocks. For me, comfort comes from knowing that grasping, clinging, and hanging on with white-knuckled fists doesn’t help. But letting go, and placing whatever is troubling me into God’s loving care, does.
    As an approach to meeting our needs, letting go is very different from clamping down, striving, and trying harder.
    Not long ago, I was sitting in my counseling office with a client who was confused and conflicted about a number of things going on in her life. In passing, she mentioned that she had attended a funeral for a little boy with Down syndrome who had died of leukemia. She didn’t know that my son was handicapped or that when Nathan was born, we were told there is a higher incidence of leukemia among those with Down syndrome than there is for the typical population. She had no idea what strong emotion her story stirred in me.
    For the moment, I did the clinical thing. I suppressedthe emotion and focused on helping my client. But as most of us know, suppressed emotion doesn’t stay down for long. It’s like trying to hold a beach ball under water. No matter what you do, it keeps popping up.
    I succeeded in pushing this woman’s story to the back of my mind until the next evening, when I was sitting by the fire reading my mail. Among the stack of papers, there was a letter from a woman who had read my book
Angel Behind the Rocking Chair.
She recounted some of the beautiful characteristics of her son, whom she had recently lost after a long battle with leukemia. The child had had Down syndrome and was Nathan’s age.
    Well, that did it. I was overcome with emotion. All the feelings of the previous day came flooding back. At such times, one thing is certain: No amount of striving or trying harder is going to resolve those deep conflicts of the soul.
    I went to my bedroom, sat on the bed, had a hard cry, and talked to God. I told Him about my fears and asked Him to help me live in the here and now and not to forecast negatively into the future. And then I said something I don’t think I had ever formally said before:
God, I choose to trust You with Nathan’s life and with Nathan’s death.
It was a statement of letting go that ushered in a sense of peace. My emotions weren’t at flood stage anymore. They had subsided. 2
    Recently I came across a Scripture that spoke to me about suffering and expectations:
    Then [Jesus] told them what they could
expect
for themselves: “Anyone who intends to comewith me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all.”
    L UKE 9:23–24,
T HE M ESSAGE
, E MPHASIS M INE
    As card-carrying members of the human race, we should expect suffering. Expect heartache. Expect pain and disappointment. Expect the unexpected. Yet while all this is true, we can also expect that as we give God the lead, He will give us what we need to endure the heartaches we experience. He will show us how to navigate the raging storms that come our way.
    I recall taking our children to a pediatrician for checkups and being told that they needed immunizations. The nurse explained the risks and ramifications of the shots and quoted some statistics. One out of an astronomical