When Letting Go Feels Like Losing

Ecclesiastes 7:29 — "This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes." Ecclesiastes 7:23–26 I have read the words of Solomon more times than I can count, and every time I arrive at this passage, I slow down. Not because it is comfortable, it isn't, but because it is honest in the way that only hard-won wisdom can be. "I am determined to be wise — but this was beyond me." Solomon. The wisest man who ever lived. And even he threw his hands up. There is something quietly liberating about that. I have been sitting with a particular kind of pain lately. The kind that does not announce itself loudly at the door but slips in through the cracks. Through a sly look, a whispered word, a betrayal you almost missed but your spirit caught before your mind did. You know the feeling. That slow burn that starts somewhere behind your ribs and works its way upward until your jaw is tight and your thoughts are running laps at two in the morning. I wanted to be wise about it. I genuinely did. But wisdom, as Solomon so bluntly puts it, has a way of staying just out of reach when you need it most. So here is what I did instead of being wise. I held on. I rehearsed the offence. I built a very thorough and quite convincing case for why my anger was completely justified, and honestly, parts of it were. Being lied to is real. Being stolen from is real. Being smiled at by someone whose hands are already reaching for what is yours, that is real, and it is painful, and you are allowed to name it. But I have learned, the hard way and not for the first time, that justified anger and free are not the same address. There came a day, today, as it happens, when I finally said what I should have said much sooner. Lord, You be the judge between us. Not me. It is not a dramatic prayer. It does not feel triumphant when you say it. In fact, if I am honest, it felt a little like defeat at first. Like I was handing over a case I had spent weeks preparing. But that is exactly what it was. And exactly what it needed to be. I set them free. Not because what they did was acceptable. Not because it did not hurt. But because carrying it any further was beginning to cost me something I cannot afford to lose. My peace, my clarity, and the woman God is still in the process of making me. I will not pretend the surrender was graceful. Letting go goes against every fibre of my being. Turning away when everything in me wants to turn back and say one more true and perfectly worded thing. That is genuinely one of the hardest disciplines I know. Staying quiet when I have something to say feels, some days, like a small death. But I am learning, slowly, imperfectly, with considerable backsliding. That my voice was never meant to be a weapon. And my silence, when it is chosen rather than forced, can be an act of extraordinary strength. Here is the part I nearly left out, because it is the least flattering. In all my righteous indignation, in all my very reasonable anger, I caught a glimpse of something in myself that stopped me cold. Pride. Not the quiet, dignified kind. The bristling, how dare they, do they know who I am kind. The kind Solomon warned about. The kind that dresses itself up as standards and self-respect and discernment, and is sometimes all of those things, and sometimes is just pride wearing a good coat. I have cursed them in my heart. And they have cursed me. And somewhere in the middle of all that mutual cursing, I looked up and realised I was not standing quite as far above this situation as I thought I was. So, I did the only honest thing left to do. I fell flat on my face. Forgive me, Lord. For the pride. For the self-righteousness. For holding onto unforgiveness like it was keeping me safe when really it was just keeping me stuck. I have sinned, against You, and against the person You are still trying to make me. I know it. You know it. Let us not pretend otherwise. And now, from this somewhat undignified position on the floor, I am stretching forward. Not because I have it together. Not because the anger is entirely gone or the wound is fully healed. But because I believe, I choose to believe, that my life has meaning beyond this moment. That I am not defined by what was done to me, or even by how poorly I handled it on my worst days. That the God who made me upright has not given up on the project. Holy Spirit, walk with me today. Help me to move in step with You rather than in step with my feelings. Set me free from my own stumbling blocks, the ones on the inside, the ones I built myself. And where I have been a snare to my own peace, loosen those chains too. May Your will be done in their lives. And in mine. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, amen.