"Making it happen" vs. "Letting it happen"

"As soon as you trust yourself - deeply and truly, based on humility, not pride - you will know how to live." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

"Am I going to die?" - My son, Shade, in the midst of a new, painful, and uncomfortable experience driving to the E.R. after falling and hitting his head

 

"There are many, many days when my work is simply to accept, bear, and endure all things, while continuing to believe (in Him) and hope (for another), no matter what - days when nothing seems to have a place, point, or purpose, when all around me seem desperately lost and screaming, either giving up or lashing out." - Jim Spivey

 

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." - 1 Corinthians 13:7

 

One of the epic struggles of my life has been between the "make it happen" vs.. the "let it happen" approaches to things.

 

Having been a card-carrying member of the former, and having been totally taken out by it, I had to (painfully) let it go. It was stealing life from me.

 

And now being totally sold out to the the latter, and learning every day a little bit more of what that means, I'm so grateful to God...

 

* For Christ's example of it.

* For how much simpler it is.

* For how much more effective it is.

* For how it gives me something to die for that matters.

* That in my dying, I find the life I was always trying to "make happen".

 

Some think that a "letting it happen" lifestyle means to been apathetic, when it actually means humbly caring with your whole person without the need to control.

 

Some think that a "letting it happen" lifestyle means to be a lazy do-nothing, when it actually means "being with" the pain of the world as it happens every day without need to escape it.

 

Some think that a "letting it happen" lifestyle means running from responsibility, when it actually means to take full responsibility for "staying in the pain of yourself and others" with nothing to lean on or offer but hope.

 

Some think that a "letting it happen" lifestyle means being an inappropriately passive human being that ends up as a doormat of sorts, useless in fighting for or defending (personal or global) justice, when it actually means to lay down the sword of "forcing" things "because it's right" and picking up the much weightier, more powerful sword of "winning" people "because of love".

 

We all lack imagination enough to distinguish between the two, and it has been my constant call to sit in this space with people while we figure it out together. And I'm totally clear that it is much more "for me, from God" than it is "for others, from me". 

 

How many times and how many people, after "hitting their heads", totally disoriented by the new and uncomfortable experience they are encountering, ask some form of the question that my son asked on the way to the hospital, "Am I going to die?"

 

"No, buddy. Your not going to die," I told him in the car, selfishly grateful that it was true.

 

His job in that car was to just "let it happen" - the pain, the disorientation, the dependence on others, and ultimately, the care, the healing, the restoration, and total awareness of the lessons that come from the experience. 

 

It takes a profound humility to "let things happen"...to bear with, endure, hope and believe all things...and to not let fear for our lives keep us from it. It's costs us everything, and the price is so worth it.

 

It's not what he needed to hear at the time, but I can hear the echo of a line from my favorite movie of all time, Braveheart, as I write this email, when William Wallace says, "All men die. Not all men truly live."

 

And Jesus, right behind that, saying, "Whoever loses his life will find it."

 

I love you.