Love That Lets Go

All is quiet and I drive into the waves of fog rolling over my windshield. It is cold and it is silent and I am learning how to let go. My hand leaves the wheel and travels up my forehead and through my hair--

I do not want to.

How long have I wrestled over this one thing? I white-knuckle grip everything from material possessions to friends to football games, and I wonder why my hands always hurt and my shoulders are always tense.

Love lets go. I hear it as a gentle whisper, but it seems a harsh shout to my soul, for I am hardened--a stiff tree with roots that tangle around rocks for fear of being uprooted. Love lets go--

I do not want to.

If I let go, it will fall and fade into painful memory laced into regret. No. No, love fights. Love grips. Love--

Kills.

Or is that love? Is it idolatry with a poor mask?

Love lets go, and still I do not want to.

I am tired of losing things, so my pockets are full of seeds, their lives dormant because I am unwilling to let them fall into the earth, where they will die. Death. So much death. So many graves that must be dug--no. I will keep them as seeds, perfect and pointless in my pocket. I will not let them go--

I do not want to! I hate this! If I let go, I will tumble into the abyss of unknown, unseen. And when I hit the ground and feet at my chest there will be empty ribs--alive, but loveless.

Love lets go? I speak the hard words to the fog that parts to make way for my headlights. Gently, it gazes into the tumult within myself. Gently, it tugs. Gently, it thickens just enough to carry in the words--

Love lets go.

Love

        Lets
  
                Go...

So that it might learn, instead, to be held in the scarred palm of the Savior. And planted there, it dies, breaking the body of the shell in groaning resurrection, and then, then love grows into a shelter that bears fruit within its season.