The summer I turned 10, my father taught me how to water ski. He was always fit and ready for a challenge, so for as long as I could remember I had watched him jump from wake to wake behind the boat, balancing on his varnished, slalom ski, arms outstretched, body leaned back into the sun, a rooster tail wake behind him and the plume of the Johnson 60 making his face glisten until he would shake his head, water and sunshine spraying on either side of his enormous smile.

I remember the day he signaled for me to throw him the other ski from the back of the boat. In the water he struggled to adjust both boots down to the smallest size. And then he looked up from the river and nodded for me to come and join him. “Your turn,” he said.

“No way,” I thought as I hurtled my little body into the water arms churning in the air, and heart beating out of my chest at the opportunity. I came up sputtering to his smiling face. I strapped on the enormous orange life jacket, tying the front two straps over my flat chest and clipping the black belt around my waist. My dad swam up and pulled the significant excess until the belt was actually tight. Bobbing on my back, he gave me the basics for take-off…. “Knees bent, arms straight,” he said pulling my knees up to my chest, and wrapping my arms around them so they came together in front of my shins, hands holding the handle attached to the neon tow rope. The waves knocked me sideways and I kept having to bob back into position. Weighing so little, there was only so much I could do to keep my balance in the incoming tide, and the water kept swelling into my nose and eyes.

Sooner than I thought, my Dad surprised me with, “Ready?” I didn’t know what ready felt like, so when I caught a moment of balance I nodded my head so vigorously it made my father laugh at the same time he tomahawked his hand forward toward the boat, signaling the driver to take off. And take off I did. Like nothing I had ever felt before. The boat literally launched me from the water. I came up and broke the surface so fast it was like losing 300 pounds in an instant, and for a split second, there I was, on top of my skis, careening across the water so fast I couldn’t believe it. It was like magic – – exhilarating and like absolutely nothing I had ever felt before. I looked down at my legs, my knees knocked inward but remarkably held me aloft as if I were flying. Water shot out from under the skis below me, and the bright yellow tow line splayed out, taught as a tight rope in front of me. I was skiing….almost.

The moment I had the sensation of actually being upright, I felt my body tipping forward and then toppling over, right back down into the water. But the boat didn’t stop. And as my body hit the water I gained all that weight back and fought and struggled to reposition myself to launch back out of the water and find the surface once more. With the forward motion of the boat, my entire body simply flattened out and I found myself skipping like a stone. Nevertheless, I hung on and as the boat slowed, I managed to twist my dragging body into a feet forward position. The tips of my skis popped out of the water at an angle and for a moment I thought I was going back up when the skis crashed together, with my fingers between them. At this point the driver thought I had let go. He sped up and turned, coming around to get me, but I was relentlessly hanging on behind him. I was now flying like Superman…well, underwater superman. O.k., I was flying like Aquaman, my head plowing a deep furrow in the water. I furiously battled to raise my head, anything to get a breath. But eventually the boat won. And I finally let go of the rope, sputtering and choking and looking around desperately for my Dad. By the time he swam to where I had landed, I had stopped coughing and wiped my face clean, and I was inspecting my smashed finger. My father was laughing that wonderful laugh of his and in his infinite wisdom he asked, “Why didn’t you just let go?”

I remember the answer I gave him. “I didn’t want to give up.” I wish I had learned right then and there that sometimes in life, you have to surrender to win. Sometimes giving up is the first, not the last line of defense…and really the only way to go. And here I am at 50. So tired of trying to hold on, make it happen, get up and out of the water. And if my Dad were still here, we would be having a heart to heart about where I am in life and he would laugh that exact same laugh, the one that sees I have just learned a lesson worth the pain it took to get me there, and he would ask me the same question… “Why don’t you just let go?”

Dad, I will. I promise. God I will. I promise. Just make the onslaught stop. Help me breathe. Promise you will pull me up.

Just like it was behind that boat, the opposite of letting go is trying to control outcomes – – trying to make-it-happen. I am so very tired of trying so hard to make everything o.k., for everyone. First of all I need to swallow my pride and admit that is an incredibly arrogant premise to start with. It assumes I know what’s best for everyone. Really it assumes an omniscience of sorts. (I only put “of sorts” to make myself sound a little better, but really it just plain assumes omniscience….) How did I get here? Is it just my nature to choose my way as THE way? Good intentions, I was told don’t count for much when they ultimately hurt the people around me. And I get that. But it was never for lack of caring. Never for lack of love. Never for lack of wanting the best. But that’s just it. I don’t know what’s best.

In the midst of getting dragged by the boat, letting go didn’t seem like a good idea, but it was actually the only way to ever eventually get up. Sometimes I just have to start over, or wait, or take another turn, instead of trying to make my first attempt work. Never give up and surrender to win are antithetical. Sometimes I HAVE to give up to win. I am so tired of being so invested in how things turn out. Because as often as I tell myself I do, I have NO IDEA what the “right way” is. I am so tired of caring about all the wrong things. All the things I cannot make happen, all the answers to the conundrums that only God is capable of unraveling.

We used to have marionettes that we got in Germany for each of the girls. They were truly lovely and whimsical and a delight to see in motion. But as will happen with little girls, they would get them all knotted up and invariably they would bring them to Tim – – the puzzle master. With a level of patience I could never muster, he would sit in his chair, set his jaw in that particular way he does when working out something intricate, and never more than half an hour later would come back with an animate, free-hanging puppet and a huge smile on his face. We would all be amazed.

Life gets like that. When I try and control things in life, everything gets all tangled up – – and it feels like I am choking the life out of every situation in which I am playing the wrong part – – the God part.

I always think of Sarah in the Bible – – not trusting that God would actually be able to make her a mother at her advanced age, she orchestrated circumstances in which her husband would be able to father the child that God promised would make him the “Father of many nations.” She took God’s promise into her own hands and in her own timing, “made it happen.” Some might call it industrious. But it was premature and meddling. I prefer to think of myself as industrious…but perhaps I don’t trust God’s timing or ways enough to wait, just like Sarah.

I don’t let God’s plans cook long enough. Often I don’t even wait long enough to see what they are. I get in there and anticipate, turn up the heat, stir, add unnecessary ingredients and try to accelerate His process – – or what I think He is shooting for – – just like Sarah. Now I don’t for a second believe I can thwart God’s plans. Even with Sarah’s meddling, God was able to fulfil his promise – – and at 99 Sarah had Isaac. But because she took God’s plans into her own hands, she was left with a situation infinitely more complicated that the one God could have executed on His own.

How often do I do that? Where is my patience for the Divine plan to reveal itself in God’s time and design and not my own? I always think of when the girls were itty bitty and they used to come in the kitchen when I was fixing dinner and want to “help.” In the days when they were all so little, I was usually alone during the week and I would want my days to end so badly so I could just sit down and have them all pile on top of me to read stories and be still at the end of a long day. But they had more energy than I did almost every day, and when they wanted to help in the kitchen there was no dampening their enthusiasm. So I would let them help and dinner would take an hour longer to cook and an hour longer to clean up. Fun? Yes. Helpful? Absolutely not. Perhaps that’s what God thinks when I show up on the scene in the midst of His plans for me and say, “I want to help.”

When she was little, my daughter Phoebe used to say “You do the Mommy part and I will do the Phoebe part…” I wonder if we just let God do the God part and we did our parts, how much simpler things would be….how much more meaningful my relationships would be, and how much more clear my purpose in life might become.

So often so much of my energy is focused on where I am going, not where I am. But I don’t even know where I am going. God’s got all the big events, the turning points, the ah-ha moments. He’s got those in store for me – – manufactured by Him not me. What ah-ha is there in a moment I can create? None. All the best moments are God’s gifts.

I am so tired of acting as if I know something about life. Because I don’t. I don’t know anything. I know that now. All of my efforts to try and effect a specific outcome in life have been a waste of my time, attention and energy. I don’t know a darn thing. Nothing anymore. Nada. Zilch. I have spent my life wanting things a certain way – – and because I was shooting for a God-Centered, healthy, happy and otherwise well-adjusted life – – because I wanted to exemplify and teach good character, because I thought I was shooting straight and aiming high for all the “right stuff” I thought it was o.k..

But the point is, I WAS AIMING. I still am. God asks me to stop aiming for anything but Him.

God says Aim for Me. Abide in Me. Shoot for relationship with Me. And I will make your burden light, your paths straight, I will give you peace, an abundant life, joy, the fruit of the Spirit…strength to move mountains.

My burdens feel monumental sometimes. I have a head full of faith and a belly full of ‘make-it-happen-yourself.’ And it’s not working for me anymore. All my constructs are crumbling and I care so much, but I cannot do this in my own power and with my sights set on how things should go. It’s perhaps 50 years too late, but I am sensing a real opportunity to let go in a profound way.

It’s funny (kind of) that it has taken me nearly a lifetime to figure all of this out. But God’s timing is perfect, and I have to rest in that truth.

Trying to manage my life at this point is like trying to lasso a whale. I feel like I am going under. I know my Mom felt the same way when she was at this age and stage, but she didn’t let go. And for a time, it did take her under. But she is back. We all get to the point, I think, when we are trying to handle what is only God’s to handle. And He will wait patiently until we choose to let go – – or not. Until life drags us under- – and we have to come up for air with a single option remaining: surrender to win.

So why don’t I just let go?