My daughter, like most 6-year-old girls, has been singing "Let it Go" almost non-stop for months.

And so has my weary soul.

I cried the first time she and I watched the Disney sing-along video on our Roku. I hadn't seen the movie yet but Elsa’s song caught my heart. She was singing what I was feeling.

Let it go, let it go. Can't hold it back anymore.

I've been hanging onto so much -- busy-ness, old hurts, toxic friendships, emotions, control -- stuffing it in, packing it deep into the corners of my heart. Holding it all together, keeping it locked down tight because that's what good girls do.

Be the good girl you always have to be.

And one day, I heard this voice. This tiny whisper. It simply said, "no."

No, this isn't for you anymore.
No, you can't run at breakneck speed any longer.
No, you won't hold onto people because you think you should.
No, you can't say yes to everything.
No, this isn’t what they expect.

No, you won’t go through the motions.

So, I did something radical. I said, "Okay God, show me how."

One by one, He pruned my branches, pared back my responsibilities, and even walked me out of difficult relationships. It was hard. I was confused. But it was freeing.

And in many ways, I was like Elsa, holed away in a beautiful castle of solitude. Yes, to some who didn't understand, I was a villain that left a path of icy desertion. To a few, I was a victim of some sort of new age brainwashing. Yes, their words have reached my ears even as I hide out in my place of quiet.  That hurts.

But, it's not about them. It's not even about me.

It's about God. It's about letting go of everything I thought was important and opening empty hands to Him.

It's coming out of my bedroom, where I hid from the stresses of life that I forced onto myself and my family. It's pulling back the shades and letting His light into the dark corners. It's opening the windows so the Spirit can blow in the fresh air of renewal. It's embracing the beauty of the God-given power that lies within me.

It's letting go and making a change. Not because I wanted to, but because it was time. Not because they said I couldn't, but because He said I could.

There’s another song that my sweet girl sings quite often:

Oh no, You never let go

Lord, You never let go of me

And in that truth is beauty. I can let go because He never does. When life is well, when life is poor. He’s still holding onto me.

Through the calm and through the storm

Oh no, You never let go

So I don’t need to hold onto all my plans, all my failures, all my hurts. I don’t even need to clutch my ministries to my chest. I don’t need to worry about the storm. I can stand in the midst of it with my arms outstretched and my palms open wide because He is never going to let go of me.

Let the storm rage on...

If you've read much of my blog, you know that when I was 18-years-old, Baba, my maternal grandmother, died. You know that I miss her every day and that I really haven't quite gotten used to life without her even though it's been 19 years since she died. But you don't know anything about my green-armed Grandpa. 

He was my dad's dad. And he died when I was only 11. That was a hard year for me. I was a seventh grader. Grandma, Grandpa's second wife and the woman who raised my dad and his two brothers after their mother left them, had died just six months earlier. Three months before she died, Grandma Charlotte, my dad's birth mother whom I only met twice, died too. It was a hard year. But back to my Grandpa.

Being that I was 11 when he died, I don't have too many memories of him from my childhood. Grandpa and Grandma had moved to Washington when I was a little, little girl. I have vague memories of their home in California and one memory of riding with them in their car when they lived near us. What I remember most about visiting them in Washington was Grandpa's garden. He was so proud of that garden. It was so big. Or maybe I was so small. But, whatever its size, it was a thing of beauty. 

God was good to me though, because Grandpa basically lived with us during the last two months of his life. He had come to California to have surgery on his aortic aneurysm at the Presidio VA Hospital in San Francisco. Every Sunday afternoon for two months, we'd take him to San Francisco for his surgery which was repeatedly postponed. It became a sort of joke in our family. 

Friday nights were my favorite nights with Grandpa. We'd bake cookies before watching movies as a family. Baba had long since taught me to bake and it was one of my favorite things to do. Grandpa had been a baker and Master Seargent in the Army plus a master baker for Oroweat Bread. He loved to bake too. I remember one Friday night in particular. I'd just taken the pan of cookies out of the oven and set them down on the counter. I reached for the pancake turner and went to take the cookies off the pan.

"Wait, Kristy.  The secret to perfect cookies is to leave them set on the pan for one minute after taking them out of the oven and putting them on a plate." Grandpa told me. I did as he asked and what do you know? The cookies slid off perfectly without crumbling or getting all smushy. (that's a technical term)  I think about that advice every single time I bake. 

Grandpa was a tough cookie. 

From the outside, he looked like a mean old grump. His voice was deep and raspy, and he often spoke gruffly. His name was Oscar and sometimes my sister and I jokingly called him Oscar the Grouch. He even had green arms like Oscar. He had tattoos up and down both arms and with age, they had kind of run together and made his arms look green. He used to hold them up from time to time and tell us to not ever get tattoos unless we wanted to have ugly, green arms like him one day. 

On the inside, Grandpa was a softie. He and Grandma had a few prized cats over the years and my Dad used to tell us how Grandpa cried when Ming Sing died. When Grandma died, Grandpa was so very sad. I can still see the tears running down his cheeks and the look of bewilderment on his face. He was heartbroken.  

The last time I saw Grandpa was Sunday, November 22. We'd just spent another great week-end with Grandpa and it was time to take him to the hospital. He joked that we shouldn't bother because they were just going to postpone his surgery yet again. We had lunch at Mel's and Grandpa bought my sister some SenSen Mint Candies. As we walked from the diner back to our car, we passed a homeless man sitting on the corner, begging for money. Grandpa paused for a minute then reached for my to-go container.

"Kristy, let me have your leftovers."  I handed them to him. He took them and handed them to the man who appeared to be grateful. And we just kept walking as if nothing had happened.

"Why did you give that man my food, Grandpa?"

"Because he was hungry. So I gave him something to eat." 

What do you say to that? 

I love you Grandpa.