“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” Proverb 3:5.
To see someone you truly care for (friend, family, or a love) growing away from you is one of the hardest things to see. In life we know that there are seasonal friends: here on day, gone another. Sometimes we just KNOW that letting this person out of our life is the best thing for all that are involved, but what happens when this person that you have to let go is a genuinely great person?
Time for another personal story:
The majority of people that I let close to me are great people; they help me to be better. I have been hurt by people that I have called “friends” enough to learn who and who not to let into my personal life. I have friends I that I may not talk to for months at a time and when we get together, it seems like we never spent that time apart.
So where does this story start? I’m glad you asked. Just recently I ran into a friend of mine. I know that it had been some time since we’ve seen each other, but that is how it is sometime with two busy college students. When I went to talk to him, he looked at me as if it were the first time we’d ever met. I could feel and see the distance between us and it felt bigger than the Grand Canyon. When I speak of him to my other friends, he was always my knight in shining armor, but now, I feel he barely knows me.
I didn’t want him to be my seasonal friend. So what do I do?
Proverb 18:24 states, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” It’s sad to say, but when making friends there are few that are unreliable friend with no firm foundation to stand on. A friendship, well any relationship, can be correlated to a house: if a house does not have a firm foundation, it will crumble and come to ruin.
Unless you live in Indiana, once a season is gone…it’s gone. Winter is leaving and spring is around the corner and like a bear from hibernation, it’s time to wake up.
Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Letting go is hard, but it must be done. I can’t grow a garden in the winter…it’s time for spring!
I want to leave you with this prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you thanking You for another day and another chance to do Your will. It is my will to surrender to you everything that I am and everything that I’m striving to be. I open the deepest parts of my heart to You and invite Your Holy Spirit to dwell inside of me. I offer you my life, heart, mind, body, soul, spirit, all my hopes, plans and dreams. I surrender to You my past, present and future problems, habits, character flaws, attitudes, livelihood, and all my relationships. I know that You and You alone are able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that I can ever ask for. I pray that I am doing what is Your will and not my own agenda. I release everything into your compassionate care. Please speak to me clearly, Lord. Open my ears to hear your voice. Open my heart to commune with you more deeply. I desperately need to feel your loving embrace. Shut the doors that need to be shut and open the doors that need to be opened. Set my feet upon the straight and narrow road that leads to everlasting life. In Jesus name I pray these things, amen!
