What to Give Up

A few days before Lent began, my friend Helen posted a quote that struck and stuck as I was pondering the whole “what to do, what to give up” question. On a stark black background, with no pretty picture or accompanying caption, I read, “Hold loosely to the things of this life so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go.”

Helen’s life is a testimony to this idea. Several years ago, she and her husband and their big bunch of kids moved from a comfortable home near extended family in upstate New York to rural Florida. There, they began homesteading and built a small farm. They also welcomed more children, including one they adopted out of foster care. By all accounts and appearances, they were living a life committed to faith, family and fellowship with their neighbors.

Then, it all shifted dramatically.

Helen and her husband announced that they were selling the farm and moving to a third-world country to spread the Gospel. I can’t tell you where they went because I don’t know. Helen can’t tell me because they are in mortal danger there. Helen is not even her real name. To be a Christian where they are is punishable by death.

I am ashamed to admit that I watched their plans unfold with not a little doubt. I saw them sell or give away everything that wouldn’t fit in one suitcase per family member. All the farm animals, the furnishings, the house and the land itself. Then came the real sticking point for me.

They said goodbye to her elderly father, not knowing if he’d still be alive when they return. They said goodbye to their adult children. They said a tender goodbye to a newly married son, his wife, and their first grandchild due to be born when they are so very far away.

I thought about how much I’ve whined because my kids are scattered across the country. I thought about a house I miss even as I love the one I’m in. I thought about how I am still so dismayed at the complete absence of adoration chapels in Connecticut when there is one in every town in Northern Virginia.

And now, I cannot stop thinking about that quote.

We hold so tightly. Sure, it’s easy to see how we might hold tightly to material things and creature comforts. It’s easy to see how we don’t want to let go of a favorite piano or a set of heirloom china. Or the house where all your babies grew.

But what about those other “things?” The things that aren’t things at all? It was Corrie ten Boom who uttered the words in that quote. It was a theme she often repeated during personal speaking engagements long after her extraordinary ordeal as a Christian who hid Jews during World War II and later survived a concentration camp. She made sure that people understood she wasn’t only talking about material things. “Even your dear family. Why? Because the Father may wish to take one of them back to himself, and when he does, it will hurt you if he must pry your fingers loose.”

We believe that God is God of all. Everything, but also everyone. As parents, we commit our lives to the well-being of our children. We encourage attachment because we know that it is healthy — both physically and emotionally — to be attached. But we have to hold loosely in order to trust Our Lord completely. We cannot grip anything so tightly that there is no room for the Holy Spirit. The truth is that God is sovereign. He is Lord of all; he already holds all our possessions and all the people we love. He asks us to know this and to willfully surrender them to him.

What to give up for Lent?

Everything.