Author: Jocelyn Soriano

Detachment.  Strong word.  Pretty scary word.  Given the choice, we’d avoid it, we’d put it so far below our list we’d wish we’ll never need to consider it anymore.  For whether we admit it or not, detachment brings to our minds our most dreaded fears – separation, letting go, goodbyes.   It’s as though the very word reminds us of brokenness, depravity, hurts we couldn’t even describe.

Yet is this the true essence of the virtue?  Is detachment a cold harsh tool that rips us off our humanity and replaces our hearts of sorrow with hearts of hardest stones?

It is just the opposite, my friend.  For the true essence of detachment brings us not to the barrenness of the desert   we fear so much, but to the calm undisturbed waters in the deep that neither moans nor retreats from the fast changing currents at the surface.

Detachment is a steady tree in the middle of a roaring storm, it is an anchor that keeps us safe and secure from the might of the crashing waves.   It guides us as we journey forth to our destinations, like the sun whose brightness never fails to shine upon us wherever we may be. It allows us to weep, yet gives us also the freedom to rejoice, trusting everything will be just fine.

Detachment is after all, not a detachment from the people and things we value the most, but a detachment from our own fears, from the fear of losing the ones we truly love.  

If we can just begin to understand, if we can just believe that God stands with us, that God provides everything we need, that God is not selfish nor covetuous of our desires and happiness, maybe we can trust that our joy will not be taken away from us without a deeper purpose nor will it be taken away from us forever.   If we can just believe that God is everywhere, and that God is in all things, maybe we can be assured that all things we hold dearly lay safely upon His hands.   Maybe we’d be comforted for we know that God is only a prayer a way, and hence, so are all things in whom He dwells.

Detachment therefore is not about being deprived of the good, but of being free from our burdens.  Detachment is not about letting go but of holding on so fervently and confidently, believing that no wind or storm can ever take away that which you have loved.   Detachment is not about our brokenness, but of our wholeness, of being able to protect and keep our joy whatever the external circumstances may be. 

What do you do when you’re about to give up? You raise your hands in surrender to the God who will never give up on you.  🙂

You can’t run away from your shadow.  You can’t avoid it and live as though it wasn’t there.  You have to face it courageously and see clearly how dark and big and ugly it is.  You have to accept it’s there.  All these so you’d know what efforts and prayers, what struggles and sacrifices you ought to make to conquer it, lest you fall all of a sudden, brought down shocked and unaware of the monster that lay hidden all these years.

“Lift up your tired hands, then, and strengthen your trembling knees! Keep walking on straight paths, so that the lame foot may not be disabled, but instead be healed.” – Hebrews 12:12 TEV

I realized that the times when we are most unloveable are the times when we need most to be loved.