Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses Read Online Free Page A

women’s conference, but I couldn’t help wondering why God even had me there, because He and I were in the middle of an intense power struggle.
    Bottom line: I was pregnant for the fourth time, and I didn’t want to be pregnant.
    John and I were “finished having children,” and it seemed to me that the Lord ought to have been well aware of that fact. We already had a daughter, Jessie, and a son, Benjamin. Our first baby was safe in heaven, and with one child of each flavor, we were balanced. Content. Comfortable. It was “us four and no more,” and we loved it that way. We loved our ministry. Life was working out very nicely.
    Then, out of the blue, I turned up pregnant.
    How could it be? Well, I knew how it could be, but it shouldn’t have been! We had taken all the necessary precautions. Somehow this baby was conceived in spite of the foolproof birth-control method we had used for seventeen years.
    I guess we didn’t have as much control as I thought. Lifehas a knack for teaching us that control is really an illusion.
    At the time my emotions resembled a tossed salad—a wedge of guilt here, a slice or two of anger there, with some self-pity sprinkled over the top for spice.
    Guilt
, because I had friends who wanted so very much to get pregnant and couldn’t, and here I was upset that the little test stick had turned blue.
    Anger
, because my agenda had been interrupted and rearranged.
    Self-pity
, because I was sick all day, every day, through most of the pregnancy.
    One morning during the conference, I had some time off the platform, so I ordered breakfast in my room, read in the Gospel of John, and journaled my thoughts and feelings. I can assure you, God got an earful.
    But then, after I had vented, it was
His
turn.
    Through the years, the Lord has at times made some things very clear to me, and this was one of those times. As I was reading John 15, I came across a familiar passage that jolted me like a double dose of smelling salts. Jesus was speaking: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful” (John 15:1–2).
    As I read those verses, I sensed God saying to me,
Pam, you’re not being set back—you’re being
cut
back.
    In that instant a picture of the three rose trees in our front yard came to my mind. Each summer the trees produce huge, yellow long-stemmed roses that fill our home with aglorious fragrance. Arranged in a vase on a table, the blooms seem to glow with a golden light of their own.
    But in the fall, John cuts them back.
Way
back. After his pruning shears do the job, I look at those stumps and think,
My goodness, the man is ruthless. Those poor things look decapitated!
Every fall, I wonder if they’ll ever grow back. But sure enough, every spring they do.
    Pam, you’re not being set back—you’re being cut back.
    In the quiet of that hotel room I knew that God was up to something in my life and that my pregnancy had in no way caught Him by surprise. For some incomprehensible reason, this was part of His plan to produce more beauty and fragrance in my life.
    Ever so reluctantly, I waved my little white flag.
Okay, Lord
, I said.
I surrender to You.
That was no small first step! I wish I could say that it had been easier for me. How do you and I let go of the disappointments and losses we’ve suffered? We relinquish control. We surrender.
    But not to “fate.” Not to our emotions. Not to bitterness. No, we deliberately yield the controls of our life to God.
    Oh, yes, it all sounds nice enough—and spiritual to boot. But, friend, surrender isn’t always such a tidy bundle. Often it’s a messy package of painful feelings like anger, rage, and deep sadness, which
eventually
give way to release and peace. As we surrender, we often feel frustrated and angry at God, at other people, at ourselves, and at life.
    Oftentimes our saying
Yes,