March 6, 2026
Letting Go
by Randy Mynard, Sr. Warden
The recent newsletter reflection about coping with a disabling illness makes me reconsider that of my former wife, Maran. I thought of her incurable disability as an unwarranted disruption of a wonderful, loving person’s entire adult life. Something to endure, to manage as best we could during the decades of limitations forced on us individually and as a couple.
I once counted the number of doctors she went to for answers thirty-five, plus many more for cancer diagnosis and treatments during her last three years. No satisfactory answers from any. Chronic fatigue and celiac disease still have no treatments, just symptom management. I’ve just had to emotionally let it go, as have countless people before modern medicine. And those still must do who modern and traditional medicine can’t yet help.
Is “letting go” a sign of emotional defeat? Of fatalism in the face of powerlessness? Or is it accepting the aphorism, “Let go and let God”? We all, especially loved ones, want desperately to fix, to ease, to comfort the afflicted as best we can. As best we are able. That’s our key limitation. We are not God. Maybe that is a hard but important lesson amid our distress, and for my lingering sadness. I did, and we do, what we can. And then we must accept God’s will, even when we prefer that our own be done.
