Letting Go & The Lessons Learned

Do you have someone in your life who is driving you crazy with frustration because you expect him/her to act differently?  I know it is a common theme in many peoples’ lives, and it has certainly taken a front seat in my life for the past year or so.

One of our family members has been living with us for the past 18 months, and we have been very open to welcoming him into our home with the hopes of providing him some stability and loving support. However, on the path of wanting to help and teach him, some major life lessons have surfaced. I have now learned what the term “codependent” means. I finally read the book Codependent No More—which, of course, was written for me. We frantically kept trying to keep his head above water, stabilizing him, reminding him when his bills were due, getting him up for work on time, etc, etc, etc.

The life lessons for me

• I am finally willing to stop rescuing him and let him hit the ground. I told him that it was not fair to him for us to keep reminding him of appointments and deadlines, that he would never learn how to do it as long as we kept doing it for him…so we would love him enough to withdraw from his life.  I must say I am quite proud of myself…it’s been several weeks now, and I have not said a word to him to remind him of anything. It has been really hard, but one time when I was close to giving in, Spirit had me take an extra long nap so that when I woke up, it was too late.
• I need to get out of the way so HIS guides can lead him through his own life lessons. I write in my journal often when I’m looking for guidance, and I have a “committee” of guides who give me answers to my questions. One reason I have decided to back off is that they have almost been screaming at me, saying it is NONE of my business whether he pays his bills on time—he is not ME—he has different values.
• He is my teacher. He is playing his part in MY life so that I can learn to detach and allow others to follow their own path. Then my friend Shari said, “Isn’t it amazing that he is willing to live the life he is experiencing so that you can learn what you need to learn!”  That brought such a shift for me! And I realized that as soon as I really get this lesson, he will be released from the role he is playing in MY drama—

Recently I attended a workshop on abundance where there was a panel of 8 millionaires on the stage answering questions about how they got to where they are and what their childhoods were like. I was fascinated to hear some of them say what a mess they were when they were young—flunking out of several colleges, doing drugs, dropping out, basically being very irresponsible and immature—and now they are multi-millionaires. Then I realized that our “family member” is just writing his story! He is going to have an awesome future, and we have to let him go through the life lessons he agreed to before he was born into this lifetime. Pretty soon he’ll figure out what to do in life, and he’ll have the most amazing story to tell of how he got there.

So now, every day I turn him over to God, Yeshua, Archangel Michael and Quan Yin. I figure They are completely capable of taking care of him. I invite you to join me in letting go of whomever it is that you are hanging on to. Stop delaying their growth and let them get on with their own lives!   You’ll feel so FREE!     Heather

Tagged as: family, learning, lessons, letting go