Let It Go
It’s 5:30 a.m. and the display light on our electric alarm clock turns off. We just lost our power. I lay there and wait to see if it comes right back on. It doesn’t. My husband calls the power company and is informed there are 300 meters out in the area. Three hundred. Our home is the only one on our power line which means, as usual, it’s going to be some time before our power is restored.
My husband and I (still half asleep) bundle up, flashlights in hand, to face the bitter cold temperature. It’s 8 degrees and we roll the portable generator out of his workshop. It takes a while to get things set up — cables connected, breakers off and on, main breaker off — before our house comes roaring back to life. It seems like we will never get back to the warmth of our house.
I take my flashlight and trudge uphill to check the sheep who are totally unaware there’s a problem. They lay contentedly in their warm bedding without a care in the world, unaffected by the emergency.
In this weather, it won’t take long for the water pump and their waterer to freeze over. But the sheep don’t know that. The new generator is supposed to supply power to the whole house, but it’s never been tested in the winter when there are extra heaters and heated waterers and water pumps also plugged in. The generator starts then stops. I go around to the buildings unplugging and turning off those things pulling power from the house.
I had plans to be gone for part of the day. Now that’s not happening at least until power is restored and I can shut the generator down before I leave. I have a hard time pivoting from what I was planning to do and what I was actually going to have to do.
I often have a hard time pivoting and hang onto things for too long sometimes. Instead of letting them go I allow them to take root in my life. I choose to let these things change my mood, even make me think the whole day (or week or month) is ruined just because something happened I didn’t expect or like.
It’s foolish really. It’s also a choice and I tell myself again this particular event is just a small blip on the radar screen of my life. Still, sometimes I hang on, determined to make the event bigger than it really is as my “should have could have would have” list of things automatically and continually scrolls through my mind.
I trudge back up the frozen hill, the sheep still nested in their bedding, look up as I enter. I stop, look, breathe in, breathe out. Then I hear the Good Shepherd say to my heart, “Let it go. Lay it down, I’ll pick it up. Leave it behind. It’s over. In the grand scheme of your life this doesn’t matter. Go on to the next thing.”
And I do, this time I do. But I don’t know if I will the next time or the next. But one thing I do know for sure, this small thing has shone a light on much bigger things I need to let go of. Things I’ve held on to for years that have tainted relationships, changed who I am and certainly not for the better.
Let it go. Lay it down, He’ll pick it up. Leave it behind. It’s over. It’s over.
And I finally go on to the next thing.
Jackie Deems copyright 2023
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13,14
