Allowing the Questions: A Year of Letting Go

“…Always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire, more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

The word had been floating around my mind all morning, as I journaled and prayed in the abbey church that had become my spiritual home every turning of the year for the past decade or so. I didn’t hold onto it but just let it drift by—a thought on the blustery winter wind. Each year, faithfully, I showed up to the monastery to pray—an elongated practice of Examen, in which I reviewed the year behind and allowed God to guide my intentions for the year ahead. And each year, God had given me a word that anchored me throughout the year. I wasn’t sure that this was my word. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be.

Stretching my legs after long hours of sitting in the church, I turned the corner onto Magnolia Lane. My second favorite place on the property, after sitting in the refracted light of the rose window, is under the drooping umbrella of my favorite magnolia tree. She contains worlds within her branches and has been a sheltering place for me through the years. I longed to hide myself within her limbs on this day.

As soon as I turned onto the path lined on both sides by towering trees, my breath caught in my chest. The branches that used to spill into the road, burdened by decades of weighty growth, were gone. The trees had been manicured, pruned back until they no longer resembled the ancient matriarchs that used to line the lane. The tears came quickly as I rushed over to touch the scarred tree, the places where her branches were torn away. I was shocked by the fierceness with which the grief hit me, and I knew the tearing in my chest was about more than the tree.

At the end of another grueling year of work, grad school programs, an internship, and the rollercoaster of emotional and mental health my two teens and I had been on, I longed for stability and sameness. I was, instead, met with more startling change. It is all I seem to be faced with these days—the brutality of the unknown and the evaporating vapors of the illusion that we have any control at all.

Inserting itself into my swirling thoughts was the gentle word that kept appearing like a whisper. I groaned as I let my fingers fall away from the barren tree trunk. “I know,” I said aloud, an admission that I must accept the word that was chasing me down and what God was trying to, ever so kindly, tell me. Pruning is necessary to remain healthy. Cutting back what is weighing you down can lead to new growth. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like hell.

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Allow—I write it at the top of the page before I copy several quotes from Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke beneath it that speaks to the place I am in as I enter 2025. A month into the year, I’m still not comfortable with this word. I left Magnolia Lane that day and returned to church to kneel in noonday prayer and say “Yes, God, I will let life happen to me this year. I’ll try to let go and allow your will to be done.” But so far, I haven’t been good at following through on that promise.

This week, I stepped off the plane, my body still on West Coast time and my mind reeling to catch up after a week away from my family, juggling two remote jobs and a looming dissertation deadline while trying to be present with the church community and friends I had gone to spend time with.

I crashed into bed that morning and woke up several hours later in an utter panic. Panic upon waking had become my constant companion over the past month, an anxiety unlike any I’d felt before stalking my morning hours. But this was something new and it didn’t fade into the afternoon. Every part of me screamed for it to stop as I tumbled into an abyss of alternating pain and forgetful sleep for the next four days.

Today, as I write this, I’m doing everything I know to do to combat the anxiety that has descended upon me. I’ve been here before—medicine and therapy, yoga and walks, meditation and journaling. I send a voice message to a friend who has been praying for me and tell her about my day. She sends a message back, laughing. “Only you would have a detailed plan for how to conquer your anxiety. You know this is another thing you can’t control, right?” she says. Okay, so allowing life to happen may be a little harder than I anticipated, but I’m working on it.

Today, allowing looks like a day in which I choose to sit down deadlines for silence instead. Tomorrow it will look like choosing to control what little I can and letting go of that which is not mine to do. As this year goes on, I am sure it will look like a thousand tiny choices to find patience enough in myself to endure when I want simple answers and completed tasks instead. It will certainly look like more discomfort and unknowing, making peace with that which is unresolved.

There are more questions about what my future holds right now than answers and this is not a place I like to let myself remain in. I’d like to think this year is about allowing God to grow deep, steady roots underneath me. My mind wanders back to the drastically pruned Magnolia, and I have a sneaking suspicion there’s more to let go of first. Perhaps allowing looks more like loving the questions because of the new growth they bring, no matter how painful.

“I want to beg you, as much as you can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

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Listening with you - I’d love to hear from you!

Have you ever received a word or theme for a season of your life? How did it shape your experiences? Do you have one for 2025?

What does "allowing" look like in your own life right now? Where are you being invited to let go or trust?

Rilke encourages us to "love the questions." What is a question you are currently sitting with that you are learning to embrace rather than rush to answer?