Let go

I had just left the theaters from watching Finding Dory & I was thinking of the moral & summary. When all of a sudden, a memory of a text I had sent to a friend earlier flashed back to my mind. The ending reading, “but once it all ends, it hurts like hell.”  The thought crossed my mind immediately, is that what you think letting go is? That if you actually ‘let go’, there will be pain & lots of it??   
Ok. Whoa. Wait. Stop the car, slam the breaks. (NOT LITERALLY)
In a crazy, unintentional chain of thoughts due to a MOVIE, I had unlocked a door of my very own flash backs. All the flash backs of rejection- time & time again, no matter how hard I tried even as a child, my efforts to “control” other people’s acceptance & love for me failed every single time. I would change myself or act accordingly to their liking & it would only work temporarily. Eventually, who was meant to be lost, was lost.  Who I never fought for is still here, to this very day.
In my mind, somehow letting go meant there’d be pain & I didn’t want pain. Because I know pain too well. I flashed back to life as a child when I had no control over anything. What was done to me, what was said to me & what was said about me, how I was treated, how I was raised, who did what & who said what, who blamed me for faults not my own, who molded my personal identity as a child, the teachers who’d said horrific things or the kids who didn’t like the color of my skin.
I could not control any of it, I still can’t. The past is the past. All of that is just a part of me. How I was treated by people could not be controlled.
So somehow, I came into this cocoon of my own protection with walls painted with pain thinking that holding on keeps the hurt away, but day after day, year after year, it’s still the same. Only I’ve tried to gather prisoners through the years & tried to “make” things happen because I had no control as a child. Crazy, right? Oh, but we think this way, we do! We just don’t stop to think of what we’ve done, ignorance is only bliss for a time until we’re forced to face reality.
Then, in a still small voice, I hear “It’s okay, you can let go. You don’t have to hold on to them anymore, those moments of the past. You couldn’t control what happened, none of it is your fault. People choose how they want to treat others & it wasn’t your responsibility to make them treat you lovingly.  Let go, it’s OK. Not even I, God, can force someone to love me or to pay attention to me even though I’ve sent my son to die for them. I get no gratitude from most, but I am not a puppeteer & my creation are not my puppets.  You aren’t alone in this, it’s okay to finally let go now, Amanda. How people act is out of your control, just be OK now.”
Wow. I never once thought of it that way, that God gets treated worse then we do & He knows it & He won’t force us to love Him or even to believe in Him. Wow.
So after a spiral into the past & stuck in a deep, deep place- all because of a movie & a text message- I found the root of my inability to let go.
Here’s to letting go & burning that cocoon with all of those stupid pain-painted walls!!!  (Haha)
Until next time,
Amanda