Letting Go of False Responsibility

This post is going to be a personal one. Jesus has been healing some deeper areas of my heart recently, and while writing this feels vulnerable, I am happy to share it with you today.

A couple of weeks ago I did something I had been considering for the past several months. I visited my ex-husband’s grave. He passed away almost 26 years ago, and it had been many, many years since I was at the cemetery.

A situation in my life had been stirring up some memories and raw emotions in my heart concerning him. I hoped that doing this would help me process some things and deal with some unfinished business that I was having trouble letting go of.

To give you some context, many years ago I was married to someone that had a much bigger problem with drugs and alcohol than I had realized. Our marriage only lasted a year before he moved out.

Looking back, I was partially in denial but also truly unaware of the depth of addiction he was wrestling with. This came as a huge surprise to me, because we dated for four years, (and worked together for three of those years) so it wasn’t like I just met him.

One Wednesday evening, six months after we divorced, his mom and dad stopped over to my apartment. I remember seeing their faces in my doorway, just knowing whatever they were going to say would change everything forever.

It did. 

They came over to tell me to tell me that he had died, and it was later confirmed that he died of a drug overdose.

I had just spent the afternoon with him a week earlier. We had a difficult conversation, and I gave my wedding rings back to him before we parted ways. As I watched him leave and walk down the sidewalk to his car, my heart sank. Just two years earlier, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. Despite everything that happened between us, he was always so kind to me. I knew he never wanted to hurt me.

The night I found out he passed away, his mom also mentioned to me that they found the letter I wrote him on his dresser. It was open, so it looked like he read it.

The letter…

I had so much swirling around in my mind after we talked that last time, so I ended up writing him a letter expressing many different things to him. I had tried for so long to convince him to stop drinking and using drugs and to also go to church with me, and I tried one last time.

I had given my life to Jesus just a few months earlier, and I wanted him to know Jesus in the same way I was getting to know Him. My life had been changing so much, and I wanted him to experience the same thing.

I loved him, but I knew Jesus loved him even more. I had asked my pastor how to pray for him, and he told me to pray that God would soften his heart. I had no idea what that meant at the time, but that’s what I prayed. I felt so much responsibility to find the right words and the right way to convince him to get help.

In the days, weeks, and months following his death, I discovered so many things I never knew. One of those discoveries was a friend of his telling me that he sold the rings I returned to him and bought drugs with them. 

I remember the moment I realized I gave him something he could sell to buy drugs. That never even occurred to me when I gave them back. It haunted me for years, wondering if those were the same drugs he bought that ultimately killed him. 

(Now let’s jump ahead to a couple of weeks ago…)

As I drove out to the cemetery, I had no idea how I would react to being there. I hadn’t been there in many years, and it felt surreal.

Memories of that time in my life flooded my mind and heart when I arrived. 

I stood there for a few minutes, and I became starkly aware of how much time has passed. I was 26 back then, and I am 52 now. I am twice the age I was when I saw him last.

A sense of guilt and failure was surrounding me as I stood there.

That’s when suddenly it hit me…

I quickly became aware that part of me still felt responsible for never being able to convince him to stop using. As a result, part of me felt responsible for his death.

As I recognized this, I also recognized something else for the first time. I had been holding myself responsible for something that wasn’t actually mine.

I unknowingly took something that was his choice and responsibility (to seek help), and I held myself as responsible, instead.

I then saw something I hope to never forget. I saw a picture in my mind of myself with a thin covering on me that had a zipper at the top. It covered me from head to toe. 

As I unzipped this covering, I felt more and more free. I saw myself stepping out of it, and in my mind, I saw the full-body covering laying on the ground beside me. 

It felt like letting go of a layer that wasn’t really me in the first place. 

This was a layer I carried around for almost 26 years.

That layer wasn’t part of my true identity, so I left it behind…

Since that day, I have had such a sense of being released from a burden I didn’t even know I had been carrying all of those years.

Sometimes we can carry burdens we don’t even recognize are greatly affecting our lives, because it can feel like something we’re supposed to carry.

We can see a loved one going down a path that will only hurt them, but when our words, prayers, and efforts seem to fall short, it can feel like we failed. That’s such a heavy weight to carry.

But what if that’s not something we’re supposed to carry?

I don’t mean that it doesn’t hurt, that grief isn’t part of the process, or that we stop praying or caring. But that weight of responsibility to make someone change? That is a burden you were never created to carry.

I hope this recent example of recognizing and letting go of false responsibility in my own life encouraged you today.

This was a heavy post, so I am going to lighten it up a bit as I close this out. If you can relate to this and recognize you may be taking responsibility for something that is not yours, I am going to ask you to imagine something:

• Imagine a picture of yourself standing in front of you. If there is a layer of false responsibility (or something else that isn’t who God created you to be) that has been covering you, imagine yourself unzipping that layer and stepping out of it. This doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you are releasing yourself from the part that isn’t yours to carry.
  
• You might feel silly doing this, (that’s ok!) but you may even find it helpful to act it this out. Pretend to unzip the layer and step out of it.
  
• What do you look like underneath that layer?
  
• What do you see?
  
• How does it feel to step out of it?
  
• Ask Jesus what He wants you to know right now. I’m believing He is going to encourage your heart. He knows what you need today.