I still remember when she told me.

It wasn’t then, right when it happened, but some years later, me in my 30s, as we were setting the candlelit table for Christmas one year.

My mama – as the two of us moved methodically around, carefully arranging plates, glasses, napkins, silverware, all our very finest – she told me how she remembered dropping me off at college for the first time, a whole state away from home.  Me, just 18, there in that tiny dorm room with unadorned bunk bed and modest wooden desk and her, driving the 4 hours back to Nebraska alone.  She hadn’t cried on the way home, she’d said.  Hadn’t cried that first night apart.  But it was the next evening, when suppertime arrived and she went to put 6 plates on the table and realized she only needed 5 now – that was when the tears poured out and over, so that she had to sit and breathe before she could finish the task at hand.  When what she had known in her head for some time really took root in her heart.

I remember hearing these words, this story, and looking up from the beautifully adorned, brightly lit table, now prepared to welcome a host of those beloved to the great Christmas feast – and it was so very dark outside.  And I thought about what kind of love it takes to let one who is so very dear to you move away, not because you want them to, but because it is the best thing for them.  Thought about what an intense kind of grieving there is in that act of choosing to release one whom you treasure, one to whom you only want to cling tightly and hold and never say goodbye.

I thought of this kind of love again just this morning at 4:00 a.m., as I was driving our foreign exchange student from Spain to the airport – her time to head back to what she’d always known.  And after the last words had been spoken and the hugs had been given, after I watched her walk a ways down the jet bridge and she disappeared from sight, I sat down on the black plastic waiting room seat, hot tears running down my cheeks; me, not ready to be without her yet.  Ever.  Pondering again how quickly one’s heart can come to love with such intensity.  And too, how much pain comes in the letting go.

And the act of letting go isn’t just for those who are physically leaving us, is it?  Sometimes the hardest people to let go of are the ones who are still right here with us, in our midst, but beyond our grasp, for whatever arduous reason.  The folks who are beloved, but who need space and time away to heal, to forgive, to flourish.  To mend what is broken.  And we step away, not to be unkind or unfeeling.  No!  To the contrary!  Because sometimes the very best that love can do is to turn from and let be.  C.S. Lewis says that, ‘Love is unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.’  And so we let our own hearts break so another’s doesn’t have to, we point our beloved back to the very best, even when that leads us to a most raw and piercing place ourselves.

The moving-toward kind of love can be easier sometimes, I think, because there is often some type of benefit in it for us, yes?  As we pursue people in our lives, we might receive something – a hug from a child, an affirming word from a friend, a dinner invitation or a ‘thank you’ card or an opportunity to see a stranger grow in his faith.  But the hardest love – that which calls us to open wide our arms, to loosen our grip, to freely release people – it doesn’t result in us receiving anything, really.  Most often ends in a sort of burning emptiness, a hole now where the one cherished used to fit.

But we let go for love.  For love of the beloved.  We let go because we believe that something better is yet to come.

I wonder sometimes if this was the love that Christ had for His disciples, for his dear friends – Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, for his own mother, as He hung on the cross, and let them go.  Because that was the very best for them.  For us.  His body – broken for us.  His blood – shed for us.  Our Lord, I suppose, He could have clung tightly to this world, to the ones He loved here.  Could have refused to leave, refused to die this death.  But He knew what was to come.  He saw Perfection and Restoration and that all would be made Right in the releasing of His beloved.  He did it, not for Himself, but for those He so deeply cherished.  That they might know more of Him – more of Light and Life!  That Shalom might come to and be experienced by His people!

And we too are called to let go, sometimes.  To say to our beloved, ‘I love you so much, with such intensity and fervor, that I want only what is best for you.  And what is best for you is not this, but something else.’  To say, ‘I release you to do and to be what God intended, that He might redeem and perfect you in the most perfect act of re-creation.’  And to say, ‘I will wait for you.  I will pray for you.  I will rejoice, knowing that – someday, somehow – all will be Good and Whole again.  Love will be perfected then in a way that it isn’t and can’t be now and we will be together always There.’

When my mama left me there, in that little dorm room, nearly 20 years ago now – she gave me the greatest gift.  She entrusted me to One greater than herself, at enormous cost to her own heart and soul, knowing that He would meet me and provide for me and be all that I needed.

And we are called to love like that.  The hardest love.  Laying down our own lives, our own desires, for our beloved.  That our beloved may flourish in the Grace and Mercy and Love found only in our Lord.

May it be so.

 

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