“The Power of Letting Go and Letting God”

I wanted to share a little story that happened to me when I was younger. The memory of this rose up in me when some repressed grief was being released during a healing session. 

In my soul frequencies (known via my  Rainbow Light Soul Report) lay an element (one of many) to master the ability of “letting go” to help my soul evolve in this lifetime.   Early on in my life, my default state was the opposite of holding on and trying to control. Obviously looking back I saw how that was all meant to be, for I could not learn about letting go if was already letting go, could I?  This runs true for anything else we need to learn about in a lifetime to evolve our soul.  We will have to be almost like the opposite of what we need to learn in order to realize things about our self for our personal growth and soul evolution. 

For me the urge to hold on and control started at an early age, by the way, my life ran. My childhood environment was often unpredictable, unstable and erratic, and I didn’t feel safe and secure at all.   As a child, I also ran on high levels of anxiety (not surprised on that one) and was constantly in worry mode too, because the life outside of me mirrored that back to me.  Looking back, I could see I adopted certain behaviors that appeared to help me take back some kind of control or so I thought, such as what I could eat (I had a bit of eating disorder) and would also have some behavioral patterns similar to OCD – thankfully I grew out of both those things as life took a different direction.

I also had this constant urge to predict the needs of my family and others near to me and hence I would sort out things before they were even asked of me to help to regain some kind of balance or so I thought.  This thought perception grew while I was trying to please everyone else to make them happy so I could feel better inside.  I was a highly sensitive child and hence if others around me were not in a good place within themself, I felt that too. I remember I also made some kind of meaning that they didn’t feel good because I may have done something wrong or that there was something wrong with me. So I did what I could to make them feel better, which when they did would, in turn, make me feel better and more at ease. 

By doing thos was my way of trying to control my situation and others to help me feel better, even though I didn’t consciously know I was doing this at the time.  (Some may call the the birth of a people pleaser and I can see that to be true now of course)

As I grew up I became the one in the family everyone could rely on.  Some may say this was a positive too, as I could predict their needs and seem to handle the requirements to help keep some kind of balance and often step into the role of mediator in any conflicting situations (which was many).  I was only a kid but I was acting like a parent!!   At times I would be so prepared by my predictive tendencies that by the time anyone asked me to do something, I had often already done it! 

The downside of this was I then got taken for granted a lot, used and manipulated.  In my early days, the little control freak inside of me wouldn’t allow me to drop the ball on this either so it was a big pressure to hold onto for someone so young.  The thing with this kind of behavior too, it carries so much heavyweight and even though at first, the behavior seemed to help me cope to not to feel so anxious or worried, after a while it turned itself on its head, and the anxiety and worry increased because of the pressure of trying to keep it all up.

One of the first life experiences I remember that was trying to guide me to let go was when I was about the age of around 13. I came to realize that I don’t actually have much control at all about anything in life! 

At that time, I was holding a huge responsibility of looking after a pony Louis (on top of other things I was doing) – how I even got this pony is a long story maybe to be told another time but having a pony wasn’t what I had asked for. The whole situation initially started through an exchange my Dad made in a pub with some gypsies! We were not rich or wealthy to have pony either so it also added to other stresses. 

My parents had decided to let me deal with it all, they didn’t want to be involved because not long after this pony arrived they had fallen out with someone in the stable yard where the pony was kept.  After some time it was pretty evident, I wasn’t coping too well.  I was not an advanced rider at that time, in fact, I was a real novice.  I had not ridden for very long and Louis was a bit too advanced for me and he was also quite temperamental too.   A few incidents had happened whilst I rode him that had made me feel unsafe on him and Louie also picked up on my fear about this and thus acted up even more.  Horses and ponies are very intuitive and will play up if they know the rider holds some kind of fear inside.  

There were lots of issues going on at home too (life dramas) and I was also feeling a little bit intimidated by some others at the stables whom I felt looked down at me. I was the new kid on the block and not from the area either!  I remember feeling very out of my depth with it all and started to get sick with stress like symptoms. 

One day I remember feeling very ill but I still had to go to the stables to look after Louie. It was in the heart of a UK winter –  snowy, windy and bloody cold!  I  had to travel to the stables for over an hour and a half each way on two or three buses each day after school and at weekends.

On this particular day whilst trying to do my work at the stables, I almost fainted and one of the people at the stables who saw I wasn’t looking too well, offered to help me and arranged a taxi home for me.  She said would look after Louie so I could take a break and get better.  She was the riding instructor who was teaching me to ride, and I had recently started to build up a good bond with her as she was so kind towards me. 

I was sick in bed for around three weeks with the flu.

When I was better, the night before I was meant to go back to look after Louie, I felt worried about how I was going to cope again (in fact I had been worrying the whole time I was sick).   I couldn’t sleep and started to think about how I could do it differently and make things a bit better.   I concluded that I needed to ask for help with him going forward. I had it set in my mind that I would go to the stable yard and have a chat to the instructor, to ask if she could continue to help me and someone else too who seemed to be kind towards me.    This thought made me feel so much better and my anxiety about it disappeared. For some reason, I felt I had reached a pivotal moment within that meant I could finally get to sleep that night too,  as I had found the courage to ask help from others and not do it all alone.

The following morning, we then got a phone call!

Our neighbor knocked to tell us she had got a call from the stables (we didn’t have our own phone at the time) and told us that they rang to say Louie had died in the night and they thought it best I don’t go to the stables as it would be too upsetting for me and they would sort things out about it.

I was devastated!  It was an extremely sad time for me as you can imagine. I was in shock about the whole thing, especially as I had thought I had worked things out in my mind on how to cope better and wondered about why this happened as it did.

This was my first lesson of truly understanding how to “Let Go and Let God ” and my first true understanding about how life seems to function in such a way to teach you something unexpected too. 

And the thoughts I had on the night before, on how I was going to manage this situation disappeared too….. It was all taken out of my hands and there was nothing I could do about it – I had to surrender to what was happening in my life as it had more control than me.

Looking back I also learned that you always get what you need to learn at the right time too and when you do, the struggle you are going through with things then seem to disappear.  For as sad as it was, in reality,  Louie was not right for me.  I was not experienced enough to handle him when I rode him and he knew it and my current levels of stress having to deal with it was not good for me either.  After a while, I also started to feel a little bit of relief about the situation too, as a huge weight of responsibility had just been taken off my shoulders! 

Then, life blessed me with a wonderful opportunity that took away a lot of fear and provided me some life support, love, and kindness I needed that helped me to feel a lot better about what had happened and even myself. 

The owners of the stable yard who were upset about what had happened, advised I not get another pony, because they could see it would not help me due to lack of support I was getting at home.  They could see I loved horses and maybe some inner potential I couldn’t see and offered me a place at the stables to be a trainee groom to look after their horses at the weekends and school holidays.  In exchange, they would provide me weekly riding lessons plus a bit of pocket money for my bus fares etc.

Their horses were wonderfully trained (they were ex-racehorses and big for me to ride) but I got taught to ride them by the instructor who had helped me and also other instructors the owners bought in to teach them. Which then led to me to be a good enough rider to ride their horses at the horse events they liked to take part in. 

What a turn out for the books and it was one I wouldn’t have dreamed of. Here is a picture of Pharaoh one of the horses I looked after and rode.

What was also interesting the stable owners initially were not that keen on children (they didn’t have any themselves)  and in the beginning, they were somewhat resistant towards me having Louie on their yard, especially the guy.  But for some reason, they softened a lot after Louie died and took me under their wing and treated me like I was part of their family. Their overall resistance to children disappeared too as other kids were then allowed to help out at the yard too which meant I made some new friends and life became a lot more fun.  So there was quite a lot going with this series of events at a deeper level for all of us to learn something important. 

And I can honestly say it was the best thing that happened to me back then because it gave me a wonderful experience that took me away from some of my troubles at home and was teaching me about letting go of what I can’t control in life and allowing life to do its thing. 

It all worked out so well in the end and I felt so much better about myself and my confidence grew on many levels too. 

Also at times when I was on my own at the stables yard, I felt the presence of Louie around me – his show name was El Minya of Arab breeding (hence his temperamental behavior). He taught me a great deal in the short amount of time I had him, and for some reason, this was all meant to happen to show me life was really in charge of everything even in death.  

And looking back at this now, all the repressed grief I held in my body, from losing Louie and the whole situation I was going through was also part of me trying to hold it together to appear stronger than I was back then as a kid and that needed to be let go of now.  I knew this because I hadn’t in the past been able to talk much about his passing until now because of what it bought up in me….. and writing this out has also helped even more healing around it all too.

And over the years of still learning how to let go of control and let God (or life) take over has always shown me something truly amazing and good things have always come out of it in the end.

I hope you enjoyed this little story, which to me was like a coming of age experience that taught me a lot, even more than what I have been able to write here.

See a picture below of Louie and me at a local Gymkhana where I won a prize for Tack and Turnout!  It was my first riding event ever not long after Louie came into my life, as you can see he was a beautiful pony. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Love and Angel Blessings

Lamanda XXX