RELEASE & LETTING GO

For a few years, I have dubbed Tennessee as “the Promiseland”. And not just THE Promiseland, but MY Promiseland.

I have daydreamed often about settling in the hills of Tennessee with my future husband and children. I have imagined life outside of the midwest as I’ve always known it. I have traveled a lot during my season of singleness, and I have affectionately called Tennessee “the place my heart has stayed”. Whenever I would visit, I’d find a tear trickling down my cheek as my car crossed the border into Kentucky on my trek back home. One time, I even put some mustard seeds in the ground as my act of faith that someday I’d be back for good.

I had a watercolor print custom made on Etsy. It was a picture of dots connecting Michigan to Tennessee. It served as my prophetic declaration and I would use it as a prayer point for what I was believing for…to one day move from Michigan to Tennessee. And I had a custom license plate cover created that said TENNESSEE across the bottom, and on the top “The place my heart has stayed”. I never did put it on my car, but tucked it away in a drawer.

Then everything started to change.

Over the past several months, I have found my desires recalibrating. My urge to travel has almost all but ceased. I have found myself longing for life among the cornfields, and would share that with friends, even to my own surprise. The longing to be in Tennessee completely diminished, and when I was invited by my bestie Anna to travel on a family vacation with her to Tennessee recently, I knew it was going to be a trip to release and let go completely (even though my heart had already let it go).

I brought the license plate cover, not knowing what I was going to do with it, but knowing I needed to get rid of it somehow on the trip. At the resort, a family was visiting the same week to have a memorial service and spread the ashes of their loved one-a woman my age who had passed away suddenly. She had visited the resort the year prior and had the best time and loved it there.

I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing I was supposed to give the plate cover to the fiancé. On his last night there, Anna and I met him around sunset at “the point”, the place that God’s presence is so tangible on the property. He was sitting on a picnic table, facing the very place his fiancé’s ashes had been spread in the lake. I shared with him that I had the plate cover made and felt like the Lord wanted me to give it to him. When I handed it to him and he read the words: TENNESSEE “the place my heart has stayed”, he got emotional and embraced me. We prayed with him and I knew it was closure for me just as much as it was closure and encouragement for him.

I took my watercolor print as well and, on the last night, burned it in a fire, surrounded by my friends and prayer.

Maybe I was believing for something God never wanted me to, but I believe He honors mis-placed faith more than lack of faith at all. Our faith pleases Him, and surrender is always key to everything we’re believing for. I think I’ll visit Tennessee at times and it’ll be a place of retreat and sabbatical, and maybe even my future honeymoon, but I have no desire to be there permanently anymore.

I am so thankful that when we delight ourselves in God, that He gives us the desire of our hearts (Psalm 37:4). That doesn’t mean He gives us what we want; it means He conforms our desires to match His.

His desires are what I want most.

And if that means I need to release and let go…then that’s exactly what I’ll do.