You Can't Stop Wishing if You Don't Let Go

So simple, so obvious, so out of reach until Jack Johnson said it so poignantly. I have heard this song a hundred times and never heard this.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

I am a holder-on-er. I love adventure and spontaneity and thrills; I despise change. It is mostly out of fear, because I am so darn afraid that I will not be able to readjust to my new circumstances. Example: I have worked the same job on and off for five years as jobs are available, and every time I am at a new location I almost don't go because what if they won't let me in or there's no parking or my boss has his phone off and I can't find them or I have, in this new setting, suddenly forgotten how to spin a crepe? I like reliability and time-proven examples to show that I am capable of something. I would rather pick up and move across the country on a whim than try a new sandwich place that is not Subway. All this to say that I hold on desperately to what I know and what is comfortable. For me. Like I said, moving across the country doesn't scare me as much as ordering a coffee at Blenz instead of Starbucks.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

My memories are the same, as are plans and fantasies and goals. Easy to maintain, hard to exchange, and impossible to eliminate with nothing to put in its place. I am in the process of changing/rebuilding a lot of my dreams. Sometimes, though, I find myself caught up in the old wishes, almost out of habit.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

New wish: I want my life as a whole to be an adventure. A year ago I would have told you that I want to do the same thing for the rest of my life, but now that seems so mundane. I want to spend three years in Cuba as a missionary, followed by two years working at Booster Juice to afford booster seats and cribs in Surrey, then five years at a new church plant in Winnipeg until it's time to travel around doing conferences and seminars for people who have the Bible all wrong. Or something to that effect. I don't know. That's not even what I want; what I want is to convey that I am so thrilled by the idea that I don't know. Which is strange. I am exchanging set dreams and goals for nothing, and I have never been so (scared) delighted.

I am letting go. No more wishing.

Rest

I'm not scared anymore because I have a plan. I wish I didn't have to be so cryptic, but there's no other way. I am placing the entirety of my self into this, because I am not settling for failure. It would take a literal act of God to take me off this current path that I am pursuing; I am settling into this new-found peace and just running with it.

Things need to change. This is action number one. They are not big, they are not catastrophic, they are not of epic proportions. But they are essential. And I know that if these things don't change, we'll be ruined. We can ignore them and pretend that it's not a big deal, but I think we both know deep down: this is the hugest deal.

Secondly, I am striving to give. Where before I have held back out of doubt and fear and irrational stupidity, I am letting go. My first priority will be to always, always be giving before I even consider receiving. Someone said it really well to me the other day. I was talking about relationships being 50/50, and he said that is a load of crap. If they're not 100/100, it will never work. So I'm putting in my 100. I'm raising the bar.

Plan of action numero three is also an act of letting go, but of preconceived ideas and notions that are only out to poison the great things I do have. Expectations? Trying to throw them out the window.

I want to be free to be fearless for you, to rest in the simple knowledge that you love me and that is enough. I promise to work on these every day.