"Grin and Bear It"

"Grin and Bear It"

Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And yet, you’re losing it from the center, from a place where all things are One, where you can joyously, graciously let go of it. You know God’s doing it when you can smile, when you can trust the letting go.

I’m not suggesting stoic, teeth-gritting tolerance; I mean grin and bear it. Unless the grin is there, unless the joy is there, it isn’t God’s work.

Many of us were taught the no without the yes, the joy. We were trained just to put up with it, to take it on the chin. That destroyed a lot of people in the Church. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you – so much so that you can absorb the no’s – then it’s God’s work.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction