Holy in the Daily

Blog posts to help women over 50 face their challenges with clarity, confidence, and resilience.

Get your 1st BURST OF CLARITY NOW.

Join over 800 women on my email list who applaud my FREE eBooks and refreshing, actionable lessons.

Let Go of the Rope

let go of the rope

To continue our theme of peace in the midst of outer turmoil this week, I’m delighted to introduce Linda Wilson as my first guest blogger at Holy in the Daily. Linda has been struggling with cancer for some time and her growth in Jesus continues to amaze me. She and her husband, Rich, pastor a Third Day church in San Luis Obispo, California. Linda is known for her humor, compassion, and artful soul. Welcome Linda!

The old joke goes like this: A man falls off a cliff and part way down grabs a piece of bush hanging there and he looks up at the sky and yells, “God, help me!” God replies, “let go and I’ll catch you!” The man thinks about it for a minute and then yells, “Is anybody else up there?”

This has been the hardest season of my life. The first couple of times I had cancer I didn’t look or really feel like I had it, so it was easy to journey right on through. This time I both look and feel like I have cancer and it is not easy. I have physical pain and have lost a lot of weight—which is a heck of a way to diet. I am still believing God’s promises to me and will stand by them for He is not a liar or a trickster, but I have to confess that I have cried more in the last few months than I have my entire life—crying over nothing and crying over everything. It has been really cathartic.

I was talking to a friend last week when I felt like God told me I had finally let go of the rope. We all have ropes we hang on to. These ropes are made of multi-strands of different things. I wove mine together as a child as I learned to protect my self from pain.

My rope was made of control, manipulation, denial, self-centeredness, self-reliance and fear of intimacy—just to name a few. All those things protected me as a child and kept the pain of loss from killing me. They felt like a nice little box I could hide in, but as an adult, the box became a prison which kept me from trusting the very One I could trust the most.

This season has been about me learning I could trust Him. This isn’t like a theory or a belief, but something deeper—an experience.

I realized I was no longer trying to control every little thing like my cancer treatments (a biggie, since I had made all my own choices before, based on what iI believed He was telling me – but still my choice to micro manage). Since I let go and faced my fear I no longer do that.

I have let go of everything except Him. I have fallen into the arms of a loving Father and it is a wonderfully peaceful place.

I know I couldn’t have let go of my rope if He hadn’t loved me as He has. The Word says we love Him because He first loved us! He has done it all. I did nothing to contribute to being in this place. That is amazing to me. I realize I can trust Who He is, not just what He says. It was not being able to trust Him that kept me in the prison—kept me hanging onto the rope. It is the not being sure He loves us that keeps us from completely letting go and trusting Him.

So now I rest in His arms and feel His love and I don’t care what happens to me. He is my Papa and will take care of me. I don’t have to take care of myself any longer—no more need for self-protection or self-preservation. He is more than enough. I feel like one of the lilies in the field or a tiny sparrow. I am dependent on Him now for my every need.

I can’t emphasize enough how I did not make this happen. That is the wonder of it all. One day I just felt His great love for me break through and that was all it took.

So my prayer is for those I love who are still holding onto the rope. I pray that His love will break through and you will know how special you are, how loved you are, and that you will be able to let go with a KOWABUNGA and fall into the arms of your loving Papa.  —Linda Wilson

What is your rope made of? In what ways are you learning to “let go of the rope?” Please share this post with those you know who struggle with cancer, and click on “comments” below to share your thoughts with us.

In Him together, Susan Gaddis

Share this post with your friends: 

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. tom gaddis

    Thanks for sharing Linda. Powerful. It makes me pray, “Lord, help me let go of my rope and trust you.”

  2. Lilly Green

    What is hard sometimes is knowing whether my letting go is truly in surrender or in giving up in disapppintment, Sometimes it kind of feels the same when I walk through the times of big silences.

  3. Susan Gaddis

    That’s a hard one, Lilly. Surrender or giving up–it is difficult to know the difference. Are we suppose to surrender or push through or just give up? Am I deceiving myself in thinking I am surrendering when I am not?

    I’ve loaned Joan Chittister’s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, out to a lot of people because she seems to tackle these big questions in such practical, gut lived ways. In times of silence, I need the elders in the faith to walk my path with me and speak into the silence. Sometimes that leads me into the “knowing” where I can hear the voice of the Spirit once again.

  4. Lilly Green

    We’ve gone through some hard times, but these last couple of years have been some hard events, coupled with a sense of betrayal in those that you had hoped you could count on. So I really question at times if I am “surrendering” to the world and the “what will be will be,” or if I am surrendering to the Lord of Hosts, because I am happy in Him and confident in the fact that He is still leading. My theology tells me one thing, but as is always the case, circumstances are topsy turvy, fogging the mirror. But we press on!

  5. Cathy Davis

    What I have appreciated so much about Linda is her willingness and humility in sharing her day to day life with this companion of suffering, cancer. Her openess through her letters to friends has not only helped me pray for her but it has, hopefully, shown me how to walk through this kind of suffering with others. I don’t live close enough to Linda to stop by but perhaps someday I will have some one near by who is dealing with huge life pain and will not be afraid to walk with them.

  6. moira

    Well, I have to deliberately and consciously LET GO of anything I’m holding on to EXCEPT God….EVERY moment of EVERY day!!!
    I wish is was a one-time deal but it’s not.
    Maybe that’s why God designed it that way…so that I am reminded that I need Him ALL the time and not just when the going gets tough….though that’s when I hang on the hardest!!!!

    So, I have to LET GO of the ropes which I’m placing my misplaced security…….and hang onto the God-rope instead!!!!!
    I’m learning…..ALL the time!!!!

Leave a Reply