Leaving It Alone

saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”  Luke 22:42  NASB

But – Sitting in the restaurant bar waiting for a table.  Enjoying the conversation with another couple.  Suddenly the man gets up, goes to the wall and adjusts a picture that isn’t perfectly straight.  “I just couldn’t take it any longer,” he said, returning to his seat.  “Things have to be right.”

Is emotional health the ability to let things be as they are without being compelled to fix them?  Are you a “fixer” or do you resonate with the Beatles, “Let It Be”?  What about Yeshua’s compassion?  Wasn’t he compelled to do something?  He wept over Jerusalem.  He intervened with the widow of Nan.  He healed.  He forgave.  Isn’t that “fixing” things?

Yes, it certainly is.  But it wasn’t about fixing his things.  His emotional involvement was on behalf of others.  When it came to what was happening to him, he let the Father’s will prevail.  He “let it be.”

We might wonder why he was so involved in the lives of others and yet seemed so uninvolved in the conditions and circumstances of his own life.  The answer is trust.  Yeshua understood both rationally and emotionally that his life was in the hands of the Father, directed by the Father’s purposes.  He was not the captain of his destiny or the master of his fate.  He trusted that YHVH knew best.  In fact, only once, at this moment in the Garden, did he ever question the assignment given to him, and even in this instance trust saturates the inquiry.  Actively engaged in fixing the evils and woes of this world for others does not mean I am called to do the same thing for myself.  Emotional health requires the exercise of compassion.  I am expected to love my neighbor.  But when it comes to loving myself, I surrender my “fixing” to the Father.  Compassion is an external operation.  Trust is an internal one.

What I notice is that I don’t do a very good job of taking care of myself emotionally.  My solutions tend to take me away from the real world.  I prefer emotional medication instead of trusting confrontation.  I don’t like the feelings that happen in my Garden so, instead of hearing the voice of my Father, I tell myself that I need some kind of escape.  Some relief.  Some temporary Band-Aid over these emotional wounds.  But what I discover is that my empathetic vacation is pathetic renovation.  I end up where I started.  The wound is not healed.  But now the path is darker, harder, less joyful.  I forgot the word “but.”  I forgot that trust is always conditional, that is, it depends on my conditional acceptance.  Sometimes the only way to move forward is to let it be.

Topical Index:  emotional wounds, trust, fixing, Luke 22:42