Letting go joyfully

This was a wall text Anna and I noticed, when we were at Pune for a meeting in a retreat house.It was a lovely school campus with sprawling wooded and built in areas with  an artificial lake and foot paths along a flowing stream at the both end of the boundary.

With Arpit and Anandit having been happily married, Anna and I were also immensely enjoying the pleasure of getting to Know Amy and Aswathi. So we came for this meeting at Pune in a joyful spirit.

The wall text in the dining room of this retreat house captured our attention the very first day. Letting go, and not holding on was the message in that text. That is when, Anna and I were further encouraged to deliberately free both families even more into the fullness of God's purposes. 

All parents who have married children have a struggle to let this happen. We felt how true it was for  us.  They can impose control overtly or subtly and would love to see the children honor the parental wishes, as it used to be when children were growing up in our homes.

One of the games I let children play when they come for consultation is to take out  marbles from a jar which has a narrow mouth. Most children will gather as many as marbles as possible in their tightly fisted palm and would attempt to take them out through the narrow mouth of the jar. But they would struggle and would not succeed. Some children will respond to the suggestion to take one by one. Most other children will give up playing that game and do not attempt taking out one by one. The human instinct is to possess, that too hold on tightly.

The only way we can convey to our married children, that we love them dearly, is by freeing them of any form of control or expectation. We can safely commit them to God, who will 'keep that which we have committed to Him'.