When you were a child, did your parents ever make you clean out your toy box before Christmas? You know — make room for the new stuff!! I remember doing that and I always volunteered up the McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys when that time came around. Those little trinkets would be classics by now and probably make a fortune on eBay, but they just didn’t make the cut. I wanted to keep the “good stuff”. I then continued the tradition with my own children and guess what? — they always handed over the Sonic Toys first. I think it is just easier to let go of some things when they never meant much in the first place. It is the things we connect to that we can’t let go of that easily.
Letting go is hard especially if you don’t want to. Things and people can become so planted in our lives that the thought of the release is just too much to consider. So, we hang on even if it is not good for us. Good things can often times be bad things — we just can’t see the bigger picture. Think back to jobs that you once loved but knew things were just not right but nevertheless you stayed. Maybe there were some relationships that really were not that bad but always seemed to have emotional tolls on you. Material things can clinch us as well and can even become the focus of our identity. From the inside, we see all of the above as “good stuff”. Many times though I believe that God wants to clean out “good stuff” and make room for other “good stuff” but we don’t want to let Him. We think that things are permanent and we need people and things to complete us just the way it is at the moment and never change.
For me, I personally love change and embrace it. That being said I still have to walk out the letting go process. That process is not easy, but I am a firm believer that before God can send me something new that He tends to take away something first. Not like yanking it out of my hands but by trying to show me that season is up. Just like with some of the toys in the toy box — we have to make room for something else. It doesn’t have to mean that the job is bad or the relationship is toxic — it’s just time for the next. So, instead of just letting go or releasing the things that don’t seem to be that important maybe we should all take a closer look and see that maybe the thing we hold so tightly is the very thing holding us back from what is next.
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