Let it go - Whitespace Thursday

Everyone who has young children knows that life is all about Disney's Frozen right now.

The Princess hosted a birthday party for the young maiden last week and the last ten minutes were easily filled with this:

Much dancing, prancing and merriment were had by the young people and the Princess sat and smiled and had a moment of joy at bringing all the fun together.

As easily as the Princess can sing along, it is so much harder to take the message of the song to heart and actually LET THINGS GO.

When you've felt trapped for so long in an identity that didn't come from a place of freedom, how do you let it go?  How do you discover who you are meant to be?  "A kingdom of isolation"?  Yep, she knows all about that; Princess Morag could share the throne with Queen Elsa!

• Do you know 'the real you'?  

The Princess has been pondering this question as it arose from Bonnie Gray's story in Finding Spiritual Whitespace.

"Spiritual Whitespace is a journey to discover the authentic you"*

Are there memories in your past that you've chosen not to remember?  Things that make you feel small and broken and helpless?  Times that were filled with so much pain that it is easier to live as if they didn't happen.

"Perfect peace from God isn't found by forgetting.  Peace is ours if we dare to remember our pain and our sorrow, and experience our fears fully with Jesus.  Shalom peace from God is a putting back together."*

We cannot let something go if we are pretending it doesn't exist.  In order to let something go, we have to pick it up one more time and give it to the one person who can help us heal.  The ultimate healer.

"Jesus is leading us to the operating room of grace"*

Or have you been doing the opposite of pretending it's not real and anxiously reliving a memory over and over because if you forgot, then you would be forgetting your very self.  A memory so powerful that it has come to define you.

For a time, the Princess saw herself as a 'memory keeper'.  She took on the responsibility of remembering the things that everyone else wanted to forget.  Everyone else wanted to pretend like they didn't happen.  The Princess strongly resisted this desire for the past to be wiped out.  If that past had not happened she would not have existed!  So she clung to the memories that she knew were true.  They might not have been particularly happy - but they were important.  

But what if the Princess didn't have to use up all her energy being the memory-keeper.  What if there was someone else who had been there, and could store those memories without cost?

"We can move on because God does not forget .  We can accept the unacceptable because we aren't invisible." *

The Princess is at last recognising her need to "let it go".  Thanks to Bonnie Gray's words, she knows she isn't alone in taking this kind of whitespace journey, and she wasn't alone in those times in her past when she felt so alone.  Her "Abba Daddy" was with her and knowing that allows her to follow the same path as Bonnie into the freedom of discovering her real self.

*All quotes from Finding Spiritual Whitespace.