letting go

"When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be.
When I let go of what I have,
I receive what I need."
-Lao Tzu

I don't know what I have been needing lately.  Maybe a warm beach breeze.  A week alone in the woods.  Some music that brings back my sense of wonder and connection to the divine.  A strong and simple sense that I am loved, and I am good.  I have the feeling that I have lost my sense of who I am.  Deep spiritual doubts.  Doubts about the love of others.  Doubts about my own self worth, that seem to go back forever, and are growing in strength.  I clench tightly down on what has worked my whole life.  Tightly clench everything.  Terrified of losing everything.  Then, my fears, realized - in a way, I have lost everything: any sense of who I am, a system of beliefs that comforted me, the marriage that I thought I had - the two of us, now pieces of a broken thing, trying to excavate the past and build something new again.  What has worked my whole life, has not worked my whole life.  I want to let go.  To pry my white knuckles from the thing.  Somehow, it takes more strength to let go then it does to hold on so firmly.  So now, this is my prayer, a burning smoke-stream from my lungs.  May I let go of what I am, and become what I might be.  May I let go of what I have, and receive what I need.