Letting Go

This year appears to be my year of letting go.

I'm not organized but I do like to know the plan. Where are we going? When will we get there? What'll happen next? Yeah, I'm that person. But this year has stripped "the plan" away from me. It's taken twists and turns I didn't expect or want. Moments that weren't on my agenda.

My daughter going to Africa was one of them.

I had envisioned us going together. Maybe as a family. Maybe just the two of us. But things didn't work out that way and I was sitting here wondering how the heck I would handle her going. A family friend of ours went too, so it wasn't as though she was totally alone. Yes, she was with a group but--

My baby, worlds away. Too far away to get to if something happened. Too remote to talk to often. Out of my eyes and arms reach. Before she left there were times I freaked. Not outwardly, but inwardly. I felt myself coming unglued and terrified. Fear took over and I knew it. I knew it as it happened. I tried to step out of the fear and find the source of it. It was difficult but I sifted down to one tiny piece:

I wasn't in control.

A shiver crawled through me. It was then I heard a small voice whisper, "You were never in control." It wasn't exactly reassuring and yet, in a weird way, it was completely reassuring.

It was like jumping off the high dive for the first time. You're terrified knowing danger could happen. You look down at what seems like thousands of feet. You think about climbing back down the ladder and maybe you do the first couple of times. But then, there's the one time you step off. You free fall for what feels like eternity until you begin to wonder if there's water there to catch you and that's when it wraps itself around you in a liquid embrace. You come up for air trembling with the victory of your feat. You climb out of the water changed. The fear no longer holds you captive.

And so with my daughter, I jumped. I let her go to Africa. I said goodbye at the airport without falling apart. I only spoke to her twice the entire trip. I knew I wasn't in control.

I let go.

And it was good.

P.S. She got home two days ago, happy and full of stories. :D