Letting Go with Thanks
It’s likely many of you have heard of Marie Kondo and her method of letting go of objects, clutter, and memorabilia—she encourages people to thank it for serving you and then release it.
“Have gratitude for the things you're discarding. By giving gratitude, you're giving closure to the relationship with that object, and by doing so, it becomes a lot easier to let go.”
Marie Kondo
I was thinking about this today. My mom asked me last week about a random box of stuffed animals I had stored in the crawl space of the basement. She asked what I’d like to do with them—I asked if I could have a minute to think about it. Well, I’ve thought about it for far more than a minute. Maybe I could give them to my kids, or nieces and nephews; perhaps I could just keep a few of them. To be honest, I can recall playing with all but one of them. They kinda have good memories attached to them, and so letting them go feels… hard?
The truth is, I have memories from my childhood that I do think are going to last my whole life, and I don’t need a stuffed animal to recall them. Indeed, they are cute, but what’s the point of keeping them? Of course, there would be nothing inherently wrong with keeping them. But the point is, I don’t need them any more, nor has anyone had any use of them for maybe 20+ years, as they’ve been stored away.
Like the stuffed animals, I realize I might also be holding onto unnecessary boundaries and mentalities that I built during seasons of pain. What served me then might not be serving me any more. We as humans protect ourselves when trust has been broken; we build walls, cut off relationships, and strike down opportunities for reconciliation in order to protect ourselves. Perhaps that is just human nature—but I don’t think it’s God’s nature. The veil was torn in the temple so that right relationship could be restored. I’m not saying boundaries are bad. I have so many. But sometimes they only serve us for a season, and in time we too must allow the “veil” to come down and allow ourselves to trust others again. Or maybe it’s not even others we are protecting ourselves from; maybe it’s ourselves. I know for me, I put up boundaries not because I didn’t trust others, but because I didn’t trust myself.
So today, I’m learning to release myself from some boundaries, (and from some stuffed animals), and thanking them for how they served me for a time and in a season. And now it’s time to begin trusting myself again and trusting Father to protect me, not thinking it relies all on me.
Be blessed in this Thanksgiving week—give thanks for the season you're in now but also give thanks and release some of the old!
