Letting go is not giving up or moving on. It’s the coming to an end of a much-needed journey that taught you many valuable lessons, and the beginning of a brand new journey with God where you are on a whole other level of trust, patience, acceptance, and peace.

What can we let go of that shows God we are trying our very best to trust Him with our lives, our spouse, our family, and our marriage?

 

Letting go of the need to know why! This was a huge thing for me. But when I was able to let go of needing God to explain everything to me all the time, I found SO much peace. I never realized how much I was driving myself insane because I just had to have my millions of questions answered. I’m sure God appreciated this respite from my long list of ‘why’ too 🙂

Letting go of my need to make him feel a consequence and WORRYING A LOT that I was not doing enough to make him feel it. Torment day and night that my being quiet was permission. That my lack of doing anything was giving him the wrong message. That if I didn’t confront, then he would be getting away with it and there would be NO consequences. The belief that I held THAT much power that If I gave off the wrong impression, that his sin was ok, he would forever keep going. But I had to be the one that let him know it was wrong, that I was the ONLY one that had that power to stop him. What a lie!! Letting go of that obsession and saying “God this is ALL YOURS ALL OF IT, being in charge of the consequences and even if I don’t see any, trusting that You are still bringing them, even if it’s just a whisper of a conviction in his heart.”

Letting go of the false idea that I could make him change his mind either through my new changes in personality, new changes in how I took care of the millions of things he said were the reasons he didn’t love me anymore. He had me convinced that because of how I had failed him, if I could just fix all the issues then there would be NO reason for him to not change his mind about being married to me. So when I changed everything for the better, and he changed from pointing out what I was doing……….to what I had done in the past, I had to let go of the belief that changing myself was going to restore us. It was NOT my fault! I had to let go of that lie, the shame, that guilt, that blame and deflection that was not only placed on me, but that I accepted as a challenge. 

Letting go of my understanding of what God was trying to accomplish. I came up with lots of ideas of what was wrong, what needed to be fixed, how God wanted me to fix it, how long it should take, what was working, what was not working. I drove myself MAD by being analytical! All I had to do was let it all go (easier said than done) and just rest in peace that God was my Teacher, my daily guide and He was calling the shots. But I could not do that until I came to trust Him. And I could not trust Him until I had enough experience with Him showing me what trusting Him did for me, and how trusting in myself hurt me over and over. He won my trust, and that took time. 

Letting go of “This has to be fixed NOW’ This was an absolutely huge thing for me. The timing was something I struggled with horribly. In fact, it led to God having to teach me a painful lesson because I was so blinded by the timing of when God was going to restore my marriage, that I was not accepting or seeing the greater picture. Wanting it over NOW was putting me in a place where I was ready to compromise and destroy everything God had painstakingly planned out and was doing. I was ready to throw all of that away if God would just remove that woman and restore my marriage and remove the fear and threat of him every straying again. That is all I cared about and wanted. So badly that I refused to give in to the plan God wanted my spouse to repent and fix his lost identity in Him (the very reason our marriage broke in the first place.) Yes, letting go and giving God ‘how much time this needs’ was not easy, but in the end, God got what He wanted, and guess what………..it didn’t take long after that at all. 

 

Letting go of fears! God is not doing enough (because I am not seeing it.) I made too many mistakes (because my spouse keeps saying it’s all my fault.) He will never change (because I am not making enough consequences.) This is my new ‘normal’ (because it had been going on for years,) This is the nature of the world and everybody cheats and it is what it is. And a huge fear and lie for me was because of my weight issue. That because I was not the proper weight, my husband had every right to stray outside the marriage. Every single day fears would come at me that I had to LET GO of because they were really trying to convince me that this was impossible.

Letting go of people that kept speaking the opposite of what God said! This was another tough thing to do because family is family and they want to have a say. They want the opportunity to reply IF you open your mouth and share with them what is going on. And then if you don’t want to hear their response, they get angry. I had to let go of the belief that I could share what my spouse was doing and expect them to keep quiet and not tell me to divorce. I had to let go of my expectations that others would totally get what I was doing and support me. 

Letting go of normal. Or what I had been taught was normal according to the standards of the world which standing taught me was actually the standard of the enemy, not the kingdom of God. Some of these normals I had to let go of and dismantle were “Divorcing a spouse because they commit adultery is normal. Believing once a cheater is always a cheater is normal. Believing that if I didn’t divorce my spouse due to his adultery it was because I had no self-respect, or that I was a pathetic, desperate woman who was teaching her kids to be used by men.”

Letting go of unrealistic expectations. I can’t tell you how many times I set myself up for failure here. I had been married 18 years when the storm hit and suddenly, my spouse was a totally different person. YET, I still expected him to respond, act, talk, behave, keep his word exactly as I had always known him to. I knew him to be rebellious and lost, selfish and led by lustful whims, giving in to temptations as the drop of a hat……….yet I STILL expected when he told me he was coming home on time he would. When he told me he ended his relationship with her, that he had. That he was not staying out late, that he would come home on time. I wanted to believe the best, so I did but only to my detriment. I had to let go of expecting my husband to act as a righteous man.  

Letting go of assumptions. Another big downfall of mine was assuming my husband would respond to something exactly as I would have responded. Of course, seeing his son crying for him at 2 am is going to break his heart and make him feel guilty enough to change. It would have made me want to change my ways! WRONG. Of course, our house going into foreclosure because he was blowing through money was going to be the wake-up call to stop this ridiculous behavior! WRONG. Of course knowing his wife is pregnant, having medical issues from the stress of his behavior is enough for him to change his selfish behavior because he is risking the life of his unborn child. WRONG. ALL these “Oh this has to wake him up, this has to be rock bottom, this has to speak to him.” ALL had to go because none of my assumptions came true. NONE Of them. In fact, what spoke to him and made him want to change never crossed my mind, Never. Let go of assuming you can understand the hard heart.

Letting go of everything my spouse worked so hard to try and convince me was true. If you can’t let go of anything else, this one you have to. IF you hold onto what your lost, blind, hard-hearted, blaming, deflecting, angry, unforgiving, prideful, rebellious, selfish spouse says, thinks, does………..you will be lost, blind, defeated, hopeless, discouraged, bitter and eventually come to believe that God never asked you to Stand or that standing is a waste of time. Let what they believe go. Give it to God. DON’T repeat it. Don’t pass it around to everyone that will listen. Don’t magnify and intensify it. Every time you repeat it, meditate on it, you are stroking and fueling the fires. FORGIVE Them for what they say as they are speaking and doing from a very lost season in their life. Their blindness doesn’t have to be YOURS!

Every time we let go and relinquish to God what is His, to begin with………oh did you hear that?  You are not giving God what is yours and too impossible to handle………..no you are giving God what was never meant for you in the first place. RELINQUISH to God what you know belongs to Him and leave it with Him. Will you keep picking it up, yes. But it doesn’t belong to you. Keep giving it back because you are not the right person for the job. You don’t know what your spouse needs, what is wrong in their heart, and you may not have the right motive. God has ALL of that AND God is God and you are not.  Enough said. 

Learning to identify what it is that needs to be let go of, so you can thrive and flourish as you stand is ESSENTIAL.

LET IT GO!  Is the most beautiful act of trust you can show Your Father! Especially when you do it sincerely, and not because you tried everything else and all you have left is letting go. But when it’s your first go to move because you know there is nothing better than that!……..oh what a beautiful revelation that is that you have finally arrived at new levels of relationship and maturity with Him!

 

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger