Giving It Up

It's hard to give things up.

You're probably thinking about how you gave up Facebook for Lent, or refrained from chocolate cake last night, but I'm talking about really giving something up.

I'm talking about Abraham preparing to kill his only son Isaac, Esther putting her life at risk to face the king, the widow who offered two copper coins, the last of all she had.

Did they sleep the night before?

Did their hearts beat a hundred times a minute until they almost broke?

I imagine that the widow didn't waltz into the temple and drop her coins into the temple offering like a little girl in Sunday School.

No, she walked slowly, hesitating a few times before reaching the temple treasury with the coins in her fist. With all her will, she released her grip and dropped the coins into the collection plate or box. And maybe she wept all the way home because she didn't know where her next meal was coming from.

The word is sacrifice.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites sacrificed animals to temporarily cleanse them of their sins. In the New Testament, Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice. Sacrifice draws us close to God once more. It means stripping away the things that are barring us from God.

I remember three sacrifices I've made for God: breaking up with a man whom I thought I was going to marry, working through fear to become a youth group leader and eventually high school and junior high teacher, and moving out of our home when my husband was unemployed.

I spent nights crying, reevaluating, looking for a way around it. Then I finally surrendered, just to spend more nights crying. Deciding to make the sacrifice didn't mean it was over. There was the pain of going through with it. My heart felt shattered, so shattered that I was sure it would never heal.

But giving something up does not mean you're abandoning it. When you give it up, you are "giving it up." You are handing it over to God, allowing him to take care of it for you. God says, "Lean on me instead of this. I will turn it into something beautiful."

And He has. I have three stories proving so.

(I dedicate this post to my dear friend Fern. I love you.)