Release.
My little boy, Hayes, loves a good helium balloon. His birthday is in the fall. Here we are about nine months after his seventh birthday and I JUST convinced him that his “Happy Birthday” balloon belonged in the trash. I hope someone can relate here! The act of releasing takes a patient and brave heart.
At the beginning of the year, Hayes and I were invited to attend a family retreat with Hope Family Care Ministries. It was our first experience to be in a setting with several other families who were also acquainted with deep grief.
I watched Hayes bravely step into his personal story of loss. On the last morning of the retreat, each family was given a balloon that we would soon release. On the balloon we wrote notes to our loved one in Heaven. Kids and parents all grabbed a sharpie and wrote a variety of short phrases on the balloon. Hayes stood back for quite some time, thinking hard about what he wanted to write. After some time passed, he sat down beside me on the floor. He asked for a turn with the marker and I watched him write…capital “A” and then capital “U”…he then followed it up by drawing a huge heart. Hayes was a baby when his dad passed away, but he has grown to learn a few things about my late husband, Doug. One of those things is that his daddy loved Auburn. Hayes signed his name on the balloon and smiled with this smile that said “my daddy’s going to LOVE this note.” It was perfect.
The idea of a balloon release sounds great for most. Maybe your family has done something similar. These types of things can certainly heal our hearts. It can also surface emotions that we may try to stuff down deep inside. Grief is a very uncomfortable emotion to experience. It’s such a powerless emotion to feel. As I have thought long and hard about the balloon release, I’ve been sitting with this word release. What does it mean to release? Some definitions for release include: set free or allow to leave. There is a sense of agency associated with the act of releasing something. It is opposite to something being stolen, snatched or taken away. So, here we are with this balloon. No one was going to take it away from Hayes. He had to choose whether or not he would let this balloon go. I had to choose if I would allow him to release it. Would we hold onto it much like the birthday balloon from last fall?
ONE…...TWO…....THREE
Hayes looked around and saw his friends letting their balloons escape from their hands. He extended his sweet little pointer finger upward and the string began to unravel. It unraveled so quickly that I reacted by grabbing hold of the string one last time for myself. He did it. We did it. We released daddy’s balloon.
I’ll never forget standing outside on that beautiful February morning and watching that blue balloon fly away until it blended in with the sky above. Hayes was grinning ear to ear. I overheard him making bets with his friends on whose balloon might “get there first.” I just stood there and let God do whatever it was He was up to in my heart and in Hayes’s heart. It seemed significant.
Our family’s loss was sudden. Unexpected. It left us in quite a bit of shock. No one asked me what I wanted when Doug passed away. I was robbed of control that October morning. With that said, if I could go back in my mind’s eye and see the story from God’s perspective, could I re-story the narrative? Could I see it as a story of release? Releasing Doug into Heaven? Not my will, but yours be done Father was the prayer Jesus modeled for us in the garden.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Luke 22:42
I want God to write the story of my life. I want Him to write it even when it means that I take a cup that my flesh begs Him to remove. The greatest desire of my heart is to become more like Jesus: to be changed and transformed by God’s grace. True life is found by walking the narrow way, by carrying our cross, by humbly walking with God. I want to be awake to all God has for me in this life: joy and sorrow.
We are invited to keep walking out the story God wants to write for our lives. Humbly, we are learning to walk hand in hand with God. We dwell with Him now and forevermore, knowing this is the road that leads to life.
In Christ,
