There is a rhythm built into everything God made. Winter gives way to spring. Night surrenders to morning. The tide pulls back so it can rush forward again. Nothing in creation stays the same forever, and if we are honest with ourselves, neither do we.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” We accept this truth easily when we are talking about weather or calendars. It is harder to accept when the season that is ending involves a person, a role, a relationship, or a version of ourselves we have grown comfortable holding on to.

Sometimes we hold on to a friendship that stopped being mutual years ago. Sometimes it is a job that no longer stretches us or a title we have outgrown. Sometimes it is a relationship that quietly stopped nourishing us and started draining us instead. We keep holding on anyway, not because it is still good for us, but because letting go feels like loss, and loss is uncomfortable.

But here is what I have come to understand: holding on past the season God intended is not loyalty. It is often fear dressed up as faithfulness.

People, like things, come and go. That is not a cold truth. It is actually a merciful one, because it means God is always making room for what is next.

Isaiah 43:19 says, “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” God cannot do a new thing in a life that refuses to release the old one. Our hands can only hold so much. If they are clenched around something we should have let go long ago, they are not open to receive what God has next.

This is not permission to abandon commitments or walk away from hard but necessary relationships. Discernment matters here. But there is a difference between a hard season worth pressing through and a closed season we are refusing to close. One requires endurance. The other requires obedience.

If you are holding on to something or someone who may be holding you back, I want to gently ask you today: what is it costing you to keep holding on? What could God be waiting to give you once your hands are finally empty enough to receive it?

Letting go is not losing. It is trusting that the God who authored the last season is trustworthy enough to author the next one.

Seasons come and go because they are supposed to. Let them.

~Dr. LaSharnda