When You Need to Let Go

There is no doubt about it. Letting go is hard, but whether you're in a season of letting go of something that no longer is good for you, something that no longer belongs to you, or something that no longer serves you, you need to know that letting go is a part of life. Let's talk about it. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst, and I'm glad that you're joining me here today. Whether you're joining me on Facebook or YouTube, I want you to make sure that whenever I go live or whenever I release new content, that you're notified. So be sure and follow me on Facebook, subscribe to the channel on YouTube, and if you enjoy what you find here, share it with a friend. I'm really moved to talk about letting go because I'm in a season of my life personally where there are lots of things to let go of— ideas, people, processes, plans— and I'm not really good at letting go. Why? Because once I've made up my mind to attach myself to something, someone, or to get something done, I have a really hard time changing my mind, deciding to go a different way. I don't like the idea of starting over. I don't like the idea of wasted time. I don't like the idea of admitting that I made a mistake or I waited too long to release something or someone. And I know that letting go is uncomfortable, but what I'm also convinced of is that letting go is a part of life. I have 3 grandchildren and all 3 of them love to jump in the pool, but of And of course, as I'm sure you can imagine, as it's time for them to learn how to swim, letting go of the side of the pool to trust their parents or trust a family member to release their hand from the side of the pool and swim to that family member in the middle of the pool is terrifying. But at some point in the life of every child that I've raised, there's 5 of them, there comes a point where terror inside, they decide that what's in front of them is worth them releasing what's on the side of them or behind them. Letting go in order to move towards new possibilities in your life is a part of life. And the longer you hold on to the side of things or hold on to things that are really behind you, the longer you are taking to press forward to things that are better. There's nothing better than looking at a child who has freshly learned how to swim. They are so very excited. They want everybody to know that now they are free. They're free to swim in the middle of the pool. They're free to jump off the side of the pool. They're not afraid anymore. They are free. Look, look, look at me jump off the diving board. Look, look at me. Look at me. I can swim from one side to the other. Look, I'm not touching the ground. The joy that comes from a child who's learned to swim is also the joy that emanates only after the child has learned to let go. If you're like me, often when seasons change, you don't wanna let go. It's familiar. They're familiar. The process is familiar. The place is familiar, and you're terrified. What is going to happen when I actually move from where I've been comfortable to where I I'm called to go, where I'm called to be, who I'm called to be with, what I'm called to do. Am I sure? And there's that in the middle. But there are times, because this is life, there's a lot of reasons I could give you with, you know, why letting go. But, but at the end of the day, it's all summed up in, honey, Dear sweetheart, this is life. Life is letting go. That is the sum total of life. It's surrender. Surrender to the things you can't control. Surrender for the, uh, for the seasons that you are with certain people in your life. Surrender and acceptance of the seasons where people move on in your life. It's surrender of the career that you had in one segment and the career that you'll have in another segment. It's surrender. It's letting go sometimes of the, of the habits that are not serving you anymore. It's letting go of the thoughts that are not good for you anymore. It's letting go of the dreams that you had if they no longer serve you and the direction that you need to go in when it doesn't agree with where you've been in the past. It is learning how to release. And if you don't know, and if you don't learn how to release and how to let go, you'll be stuck for your life, or at least a large segment of it. And you'll regret how long it took you to learn the lesson. How many times have you said, golly, I just wish I would have done this earlier, because fear kept you stuck, or a certain mindset kept you stuck, or or certain people kept you stuck. And then once you finally released, you were like, I should have done this a long time ago. What are you waiting on? So what I wanted to do was to just give you some thoughts that hopefully encourage you that when you know you're in a season of releasing, when you know that you really do need to let go and you just need that extra little something to give you the confidence to move forward. That's what I hope to do today. I am speaking to you today if you already know you need to let go, if you're working through the process of deciding if you need to let go, if you are wrestling with the reality of letting go, because there is a reality. If it's time to leave that job and it's time for you to go on and do something in an entrepreneurial sense, or to try your hand in changing your career, going going to school to do something different, there's a risk involved. You've gotta now make it on your own. Nobody's gonna hand you a paycheck, or I hope that when I actually dig in deep to this new education in this career, that this is what I think I'm supposed to do. And that it actually is what I'm supposed to do. There is the reality of change and transformation and the, and the process of transformation that's required when you make a shift. It is real. It is real that if you've been afraid to leave that dating relationship because maybe he's the guy, but I don't think he's the guy, but I don't want to be alone. And what if I'm being too specific or too, uh, my standards are too high? Or what if I'm asking for too much? But you've been convinced for too long that he's not the one, so you want to release. And one of the fears that you have is, if I release him, will I ever be in another relationship again? Will I always be alone? Of course, that's a real fear. Of course, it's a real fear to say that if I move from this place that I've been comfortable, to move to this new place, will I like it? Will I enjoy it? Is the weather going to agree with me? Am I going to make new friends? Sure, there's a fear. Sure there is. But if letting go is a part of life, then the only way that you get to the good stuff is releasing the stuff that you're afraid of releasing. So when you need to let go and you need that extra push and that extra encouragement, what I want to do today is to give you some things to think about that might help you release your grip. Because I understand what it is to feel afraid and concerned and stressed out and thinking about all of the possible effects that if you make a change, what will happen. I understand that trying new things is hard and that trying new things doesn't always pan out. I'm aware of that too. But one of the best lessons that you can learn about life is that life is letting go. It's not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when. And are you prepared to do so? The reason— one of the reasons why we don't let go is a principle of sunk costs. Sunk cost is actually a financial term. It can be applied in life in general, but a lot of the time it's applicable in sunk cost. In my corporate life, I've had 3 decades of my life: my corporate life, my stay-at-home mom life, and then my entrepreneurial life. Those have kind of marked the decades of every year. I need to figure out what the next decade is going to be marked by. Maybe I need to claim Fiji. Can I have a decade of Fiji? Shucks, I need to start speaking some things as though they are. I need to put that on my vision board. Good grief. I need to plan that out. I feel like I've stumbled into every decade, letting go of the past decade, but maybe, maybe I need to determine in a more direct, directed sense. I need to figure that out in advance. Somebody say Fiji. All God's people said Fiji. Don't mind me. But anyway, in my corporate life, Getting back to the subject at hand, my corporate life, uh, sunk cost is a whole thing. And it's this principle that when something is a bad investment, that you don't want to let it go. So think about buying a stock in a company. Let's just say you bought one stock of ABC Company and you put $1,000 in there. That was a big commitment for you, right? $1,000, I want to buy this stock. Stock, which by the way, picking stocks is fun, but pick mutual funds. Do mutual funds. It's a lot better. Um, so anyway, it is the idea that if that stock ABC has some bad news come out, the stock starts going down and you see your investment going down because you hope it goes back up. You don't get out., but you watch that investment over time do this and you just watch it. And at a certain point it's time to get out, but you just watch it go down. And there's a point at which you transition from concern and questioning to knowing, but in the knowing, because you've already lost something, because you've already lost time, money, energy, or face, you don't get out. You just replace the concern and the awareness of the declining value with hope that that value will increase. Now, there's a place for hope. 1 Corinthians 13 says, "Love hopes all things." But there's a difference between loving something and having the wisdom to know when you should stay attached to it or not. Or someone. Sometimes the healthy thing to do is love from a distance when we're talking about people. In economic terms, sunk costs are costs that are already— they've already been incurred and cannot be recovered, which means it should not be a factor in our decision-making. It's irrational to use an irrecoverable cost as rationale for a present decision. Sometimes what you've lost is gone, and your hope that it will come back, that it will change form, that it will now serve you when it has stopped serving you over a period of time— your hope is not enough to replace the sunk cost. Okay, so let me give you another example. It's financial, but I think it will help this sit home. Um, I was In my 20s, when I was in my corporate life, I used to watch the stock market in a variety of roles. So I would sit there all day and watch different people, uh, help different people make decisions with their financial investments. And I watched this one particular stock. It had a rhythm. It would go down and then it would go back up. Then it would go down and it would go back up and it would inch higher over time. It had this pattern for a very long period of time. So being 20 and wise as I was, I decided to invest some money in that stock. The problem is I did not— well, at first I invested my money. It was a big commitment. Took $200 and I bought some of that stock and it did just what I thought it would do. And I wanted to invest more. So I took a little bit more money and I put that in that stock. And it did exactly what I thought it would do, and I wanted to invest more, and I didn't have more. So I took a loan out on a credit card, a cash advance from a credit card, and put a whole bunch of money on that stock. And then it did what I thought it was going to do. It went down, and then it went up. And I cashed out and I was like, ha, this is a great way to make money. It's called day trading. Day trading is great. It's horrible when you're not using your own money. Don't do that. So I did it again because it worked before. And then some bad news came out about this company and it went down. And it went down and it went down. And because I had been feeling myself, not only did I borrow more to put down, I borrowed exponentially more to put down, which means now I was doubling down on my losses. Somebody's cringing right now as I'm telling this story, because you understand what it is to try to short sell a house or, you know, something like that, where you are betting on something going a certain direction. So you double down on it. You put more on the table. You make that decision because you think that you have the wisdom to know when you should be in and when you should be out. You have a false sense of security about something. And y'all, I doubled down, which means every dollar that that stock went down, I was not only losing that dollar, I was losing the dollar also that I needed to pay the company back. And I took too long to get out of that. You want to know why? Sunk costs. It's called the sunk cost fallacy. When you need to get out and you don't want to let go because you're hoping you're replacing the sense of letting go, the knowledge that it's time to let go, the understanding that your time here with this place, this person, or the situation is done, and you allow hope to fill in the gap incorrectly because you believe that you're supposed to hope in all things all the time. And you're not all the time supposed to hold on or borrow money on a credit card to make an investment. But the mindset that I had was, it'll get better. I don't want to let go because I don't want to lose what I've already lost. But what I was leaving out of that equation is By staying, you can lose more of what you already lost. You may not gain it back. There are times when it's just time to get out. It's time to sell. It's time to release. It's time to cut your losses and run. And when you realize that you've gone too far, the mindset that says, I'm going to wait until it gets better, I'm going to keep putting something in a bad investment. When it's time to get out, the sunk cost fallacy will keep you hoping where hope needs to be ditched and common sense needs to reign. How do you know the difference? Wise counsel, God's word. Uh, how do you know the difference? Knowing when your knower says, girl, you're done. It's, it's over. And to stop rationalizing with yourself, to be honest with what's really happening. So when it's time to let go— and yes, I got out of that and worked really hard over time to pay that mess back. It was ridiculous. When it's time to let go, here are some things I want you to think about. I want you to think about, in the midst particularly of this idea of sunk cost, that you win even if you get out and you lose in the short run. If you're having trouble releasing something when it's time to let it go, what you need to hold on to is you still get something out of the deal. You do. Romans 8:28: God uses all things for the good of those who are called according to his purposes. Everything— the good stuff, the bad stuff, the I should have known better stuff, that I can't believe I did that stuff, that I can't believe they did that to me stuff, that I can't believe I stayed so long— all of that He uses it for good. It adds to your knowledge. When you can look at what you are losing, when it's time to let go and say with gratitude, I do not leave this empty-handed. I do not leave this empty-handed. Because the reason why you don't want to let go is because you think you lose by leaving. You think You think they lose by you letting them go. You think the ministry won't be able to survive without you. You think that your children won't be able to function if you're not gone. You think that your job won't be able to replace you. And listen, let me just tell you something. In this life, everything is replaceable. Everything, including you. When it's time to let go, you are replaceable. The knowledge is replaceable. We say things are not replaceable, but the world keeps turning. Remember that soap opera As the World Turns? Because no matter what happens to you in your situation, the world keeps turning. So you have to say, when I leave, when they leave, when this situation shifts, with gratitude, I get something out of the deal. I'm going to leave better, more knowledgeable, more mature, more informed, more loved, more loving. I'm going to leave smarter, wiser. I'm going to release this person to this situation, and when I do it, I want to release them better than I found it. But I'm going to release them, release it, release that. I'm going to release myself with gratitude. That's what you use to plug in the gap of things that are sunk cost when you need to let go. Hope may hold you on too long, but gratitude is always in style. Gratitude for the experiences that you've gained, for the lessons that you've learned. Find the thing, find the silver lining, and say, this is what I got out of that. This is what I can carry, carry with me. Into the next season. When it's time to let go, make a list of the things that you are grateful of or for, of the very thing that you're having a hard time releasing. Gratitude. That was a horrible marriage, but because I was in that horrible marriage, I could be compassionate to women who are struggling in their marriages. Because it was a horrible marriage, because I endured Abuse. I now know what abuse is and how to spot it. I will never make that mistake again with health and wellness and maybe teaching, maybe therapy. But I've learned that this is what that looks like, and I can avoid that in the future. With gratitude, I screwed up my first kid. You know what? That will make me a better parent with my last kid. With gratitude, oh my goodness, I can't believe I used my tongue in that way to demean or bring negativity in someone else's life. But you know what? Now I've learned, and I've learned how to hold my tongue. I've learned how what I say can actually tear somebody up and rip them to pieces. And I now know how to be a lover of positive words. And I know, I now know how to speak life into the life that other people live. I now know how to be a life giver with my lips. Gratitude. I cannot believe I ran up all those credit cards and it took me 15, 20 years to get out of debt. But now I know how to manage my money. Now I know, I know what not to do. You learn, you live, you grow, and that's something to be glad about. Gratitude gives you the gift of gladness when otherwise letting go would leave you feeling sad. Gratitude. Be grateful for the experience. Know that it had a place in your life. You can learn from it, you can grow from it, so that you can let it go. Joanna Gaines, uh, in 2003 opened her little store, and after two kids, even though the store was doing well, she closed it. She talked about how the Lord said not right now. And it hurt her deeply to close it. She loved her little store. She had been, she had been, I believe, an interior design major at Baylor. Don't quote me on that, but she definitely had done something with textiles. And that was her training and her love and her passion. But God said, not right now. We need to focus on one thing. And they decided to close that and focus on building their company, Magnolia Homes. She sacrificed it. She surrendered it. She let it go. And in 2018, she opened it again. It's the original store. It's small. It's off the beaten path of the silos in Waco. But when she released it, she didn't know that she would get back 100-fold. 'Cause everybody and they mama now needs to go to Waco. The silos to get the cupcake to eat at Magnolia Table, to get coffee at the coffee shop, to now go to the furniture store, to shop at their many shops that are there, to get an Airbnb. And the whole demographic, the whole economic status of Waco has shifted because one girl said, "It's my dream, but I gotta let it go." I love it, but I gotta let it go. It's doing well, but I gotta let it go. Why? I don't know if I'll ever come back to it. I hope I will. Not sure, but I know it's not mine right now. Aren't we glad she let that store go? Without that, there may not have been a Fixer Upper or Magnolia Magazine. Every seed that is placed in the ground to die comes back to life multiple times over. If it is nurtured correctly and has the right temperature and care, it comes back and produces more than its original worth and value. So yes, practice gratitude for for growth. And then take solace in the fact that nothing is wasted. Everything that you plant, when you release, may feel like it's getting buried, unused, forgotten in the dark. But when you release things and you release them well, they bear fruit. How far can I go if I'm swimming holding on to the side of the pool. Can I go around the rim of the pool? 100%. Am I able to swim in the middle? Am I able to jump off the diving board? Am I able to swim to the bottom of the pool to find the rings when the kids play? Am I able to do any of that? No. Releasing the side of the pool multiplies what I'm able to accomplish. Take solace in the fact that nothing is wasted. Nothing. And that not only do you have gratitude that brings growth, but you also have the surrender of the seed that brings growth too. Whatever you surrender can be multiplied. Not only is it not wasted, it grows. Gratitude. Nothing is wasted. And then know this: seasons simply change. We learn this every time the fall comes around. It's September, and while the leaves are still full on, on the trees, I'm starting to see a few turn colors or not as vibrantly green. They're starting to get some yellow in there. And saw some leaves the other day on the grass, on the ground. It's almost that time. It's almost that time. And the leaves know what to do. The leaves know what to do, and they don't resist the separation when it's their time, when they're done. They disconnect and they fall to the ground. If left on the ground to nurture the ground that nurtures the tree that they came from originally, and every spring and summer new leaves grow in their place. It's cyclical. Letting go is a part of life. Because it's cyclical. My oldest son, we recently took him to college and everybody was like, Chrystal Hurst, how are you doing? Are you okay? Are you crying a million tears? Maybe because I've homeschooled, maybe because they've been with me the whole time, maybe because it's my personality, I'm not the blubbering, oh my gosh, my children left me type. I did cry, but not in the, oh my gosh, I'm so concerned and worried about them, him. I just, I just think it's cyclical. It would be abnormal if he didn't want to spread his wings, if he didn't want to grow, if he didn't want to take that next step in his life. And I'm excited for him to take that next step because as much as the dynamic in our house has changed already with him being gone, as much as I miss our little inside jokes and I miss having him around, as much as I like being the mom and telling him what to do, if he's going to actually grow and be who he's called to be, just like that tree with the cycle of the leaves falling, ebbing and flowing, it's a part of the tree's growth. If he's going to be what he's supposed to be, release and letting go is a part of that. It's seasonal. You need to understand that letting go is seasonal. And if I'm going to be— here's the thing, y'all— if I'm going to be who I'm supposed to be, That means that everything that came from me, that grew out of me, is not supposed to stay with me. The core of me, just like the trunk of the tree, is with me always. Sometimes some of those branches need to be trimmed, cut off, done away with. Some of the branches die, or they're unhealthy. They're in a position to poise, to cause— they're poised to cause damage potentially. But even the beautiful leaves every season fall away. When my kids were little, um, with each one of the boys, we did a butterfly garden so that we could watch the caterpillars turn into butterflies. And when it was time, after they had put themselves in the cocoon, you took the top off of the jar that they were in, and there was a little piece of paper that they were attached to, and you peeled off the paper and you put the paper, stuck it on the wall inside of the butterfly garden that had a net, and then you watched and you waited for a couple of weeks. And when the butterflies were emerging, you always wanted to help them, you always wanted to do— it said, don't, you know, leave them alone, they need to do their own thing. But one of the things that I realized often after having done this 3 or 4 times is that when the butterflies are emerging, they often leave a stain. I used to think it was blood. I don't know if it's blood. It may just be the stain from the color on their wings, but you'll see that. You'll see it on the paper as they emerge. You'll see the stain on the paper. The stain is a, is a part, it is a picture that they are actually going through the process of metamorphosis. The The releasing of one life, of one body, and the move into another life and another body is marked with a stain. It's not, it's not clean. It's not easy. It's not, you know, pure white. It's, it's, it's not without a mark. Yes, a part of you letting go will involve a mark, a mark of tears stained down your cheeks, a stain on your heart because of pain, the blood that you had to bleed out, literal, figural, of, of, of releasing something. Because when you decided to disconnect yourself from the stab of that person's comment or what they did to you, it— healing required bleeding. Healing required a stain. I want you to know that what you may consider a stain, a scar, emotions, Crying, the tear-stained cheeks, the part that we don't think is beautiful, clean, pristine. It's the stain that let you know that you let go. Letting go is seasonal, and in order for you to move from one season to the next, Guess what that means you have to be willing to do? Let things fall away. Maybe not forever. Maybe that project, you come back to it in 5 years. Maybe that dream, you don't put it on the back burner, you just work towards it in other ways. Maybe that person, you need to set a boundary with them and release them from your inner circle, but maybe not forever. Maybe there's just some things they need to learn and grow in. What I can tell you is that holding on to things that are designed to fall away would be detrimental to you. So when it's time to let go, I want to encourage you to be grateful for what you've learned and know that you get to take that into your future. To take solace of the fact that even the stuff that brings you pain— I wish I would have done that differently, I wish I could have done more of that, I wish I could have experienced more of this or done this differently— that every pain point that you have, because there is pain in release, take solace in the fact that it's not wasted, and that often the very things that we release, once planted and surrendered, come back a hundredfold in a different way. And then lastly, know that letting go is seasonal. Don't be surprised when the next season of letting go comes. It's like a shedding, you know. Animals shed their hair, snakes shed their scales, trees shed their leaves. Humans are the only group of people that want to hold on to stuff. We've got storage units and we have stuff that is cluttering up our spaces because we think if we hold on to it, we won't experience loss. You cannot avoid loss. You cannot avoid the sensation, the feeling of loss. Life involves losing things. Losing people. We lose people that we love. It's a part of life. We don't like it. It doesn't mean you have to like it, but you can learn to appreciate what happens when letting things go results in new life for you to live. And if you spend all of your time and focus on what you've lost, you're giving all of your attention to the thing that you should not recover or cannot recover. And you're missing the opportunity to focus on the beautiful thing that's waiting for you. Your last child, you're empty nesting, you don't know what to do. That's not my situation just yet, but it's coming. What about the life that you now get to live? And if you don't even know what you want to do, what about the opportunity that you have to figure that out? That guy that you were dating for 4 years and you cannot believe you wasted 4 years of your life on him. No, no, no. Gratitude. What did I learn about being a caring individual? What did I learn that I don't like? Gratitude, solace. Whatever I learned will serve me in my next season. The lessons learned are not lessons lost. They are lessons that will teach me in future seasons how to live. That is quotable. And then also the seasons. If I'm going to grow and develop in this life, I'm going to get older. I'm going to change. Life is going to happen whether I like it or not. So I can try to hold on to past things that actually no longer serve me, or I can release those things and look forward to my new suit, my new seasons with excitement. It's a part of the changing seasons. It's a part of life and growth and development. That even means letting go of you, letting go of who you were, who you thought you were, beating yourself over the head for what you did that you thought was horrible and you couldn't recover from. If you hold on to that version of you, thoughts of you, degrading of you, and you're not willing to let that go, to learn from it, be grateful for it, take solace in it, but move forward into the new seasons, you are wasting your life because you don't want to let go. And let me tell you something, letting go is hard because often what we're holding on to, we're holding on to because it's comfortable. Letting go is uncomfortable, but letting go is a part of the good life too. The last night with my son in college, I took his baby book to him and I sat down with him in the commons area of his dorm. I did 3 things. I opened the book and I just said, there are gonna be times because you're trying to figure out who you are, um, trying to find your place, that you may have voices that want to tell you that you don't know what you want to do with your life, or that you don't— maybe you trying to find your people, trying to fit in, or You know, there are times when you're growing and developing that your mind will play tricks on you and tell you things about yourself, or you'll have feelings about yourself or your situation that simply aren't true. So I didn't read him everything from his baby book. I just kind of thumbed through and then showed him certain lines. I showed him the line where it said, before he was born, we love him so much already and we haven't even met him. Then I turned a couple pages the day he was born to look at his father and how much he loves him already, having just met him. We love Trey so much. We love his laughter, his personality. Look at how cute he is, his first time doing this. I just kind of walked him through, like, you know, like 5 minutes. And I said, don't you ever believe for a moment that you are not loved. You were loved before you got here. You were loved the whole duration of your time in our home. You are loved now, even though you are in a season where you're away from home. You are loved. You are worthy. God has a plan for your life, and he has since day one. And the tears are falling, but I'm trying to hold it together because I don't want to embarrass him in the commons area of his dorm. So I gave him a lesson and a reminder in love. I went and picked him up a Bible, went to a bookstore in town and found a Bible. I was looking for something that he wouldn't mind throwing in his backpack. Got him a Bible that happened to have a sword on the front. He has a fixed Fascination with Swords. I put his name on it in Hebrews 4:12, the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. It's living and active. It pierces through to the bone and the marrow, changes you. And I said, listen, the only thing that will actually change you really from the inside out— you can read books, it'll change your mind. You can, you can meet people, they'll, they'll change your perspective. But the only thing that can change the core of you, piercing through to the bone and the marrow, is God's word. Read the word. And you know, he's sick of reading the word. He's sick of me making him memorize scriptures. He's sick of all the things. I had to tell him, oh, by the way, church is not optional, just in case you thought it was optional. I'll give you a few weeks to figure it out, but if you're not going to church, I will come and pick you up. Gave him a Bible. I gave him my love. And then I left my son 1,000 miles away, knowing that anything he needs from me is a phone call away or flight away, and knowing that everything that he needed to get from his season with me, even though there are more things I would have loved to been able to do in 10 years of my husband's physical challenges and health challenges. It's been a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot to, uh, if you're a single parent, you understand this, but even when you're married and if there's a challenge with your spouse, or maybe they travel a lot for work and a lot of it is on you, it's a lot. It's hard. And as a homeschool mom, there's a lot of things I would have loved to have done differently or better or more of. But knowing that the time is over It's over. Regardless of whether or not I'm ready, the seasons are shifting, the leaves are falling, he's growing up. So I left him knowing that that season was over and a new season is beginning, and I get to embrace that season as his mom too. Even though there was more I would have loved to do. When my mom died, heading into almost the second year, unbelievable, I tried to think really hard about what I was gonna miss or what we hadn't done or What was going to bring me pain? And of course you can't imagine the pain until you experience the pain. But I was just trying to think, what did we leave undone? What did I not say? What did we not do? What did I need her to teach me? What did I need her to— And then I said, actually to Beth Moore, The day before the funeral, she's like, "How you doing, Chrystal?" I said, "You know, I'm doing okay. Obviously, I wish this was not God's timing and God's plan, but obviously it was, or we live in a fallen world, one of the two." We die. It just is what it is. But I've been thinking, and the only things that I can come up with that are causing me pain, apart from missing her presence, is that I just want more. I cannot I cannot think of anything that I need from my mom that she has not already given me. Do I wanna let her go? No. Did we fight so we wouldn't have to let her go? Yes. But when it became clear that the seasons were shifting, my perspective shifted too. I now look— I looked then and I look now at my mom's life with extreme deep gratitude. I take solace in the fact that there's nothing hard, bad, good, or ugly from her life or even from the the last year of her life that is wasted. Could I have done more of this or less of this or said this differently or— it's not wasted. I've learned and I've grown. And seasons change. And one of the gifts of walking through the season of losing a loved one is that you realize in the space of what they left open who you are supposed to be. So letting go is never something we want to do, but since it's a part of life, when you need to let go Let go. Doesn't mean you don't cry about it. Doesn't mean you don't struggle through it. It doesn't mean you don't— that it's easy. But once you realize that the seasons are shifting, or maybe after the fact you realize that the seasons have shifted, instead of looking at what you've lost, look at what you gain. Gratitude, solace. Nothing is wasted. And seasons change. And when one season falls away, a new season is just beginning. I will always miss my mom. I will always remember with loving fondness and all the years of bathing children and changing diapers and quirky teenagers and grading algebra. I will always remember the seasons in my life where people who were on the team, volunteers, core team members, where they were here to serve me or the Sister Circle, the inner circle. I will always have great pictures of the houses that I've lived in, the trips that I've taken, the events that I've managed. I will look with loving kindness at some of the clothes in my closet that it's just time to let them, let them go. From the hard things to the easy things and everything in between. When you need to let go, just remember, be grateful. Know that nothing is wasted. And know that as you release one thing, it gives you room to receive the next. I hope this has been encouraging to you, and I hope that in some way, whether it's your dreams or your people or your project, whatever it is, that when it's time, you'll let go. Because letting go is not just a part of living, it also means that you're living your life. So this is me telling you to live.