There comes a point in everyone’s life when we must let go. We lose someone to illness, a relationship ends, we change careers or employers. At times like these we may find ourselves filled with emotion and sometimes-even if the change we are experiencing is for the best, we may be sad or in pain. Change is hard, abrupt change even harder and the finality of change is the hardest thing of all.

Events like those I describe have a tendency to shock our systems, upset our sense of well-being, and alter our outlook on life in ways that we could not have imagined. Restoring our equanimity and regaining our balance in the face of these challenges is no easy thing. A senior executive at 3M famously said “ if you plan to leap a crevasse, you’d better do it in one jump.” He was of course talking about difficult business decisions, but the injunction as readily applies to life.

As hard as it is sometimes, we cannot let go in stages—we can only let go. What then do we hold onto? Those of you who are familiar with my posts will undoubtedly know where I am headed but let me surprise you a little. I was not about to say—we hold on to God. Well not in the way you think. I was going to say, we hold on to faith.

So what is faith? In the simplest sense it is the belief in something for which we have no evidence—no proof. It is a leap across a crevasse suspended on nothing more substantial than conviction. You might well ask from where this wellspring arises—what is the author of our conviction? Having talked with and read about dozens of men and women who have made this leap at one point or another in their lives, and having done so myself on a few occasions I can testify that conviction is deeply embedded in two things—a belief in ourselves and confidence in an affirmative outcome. And here is the funny thing; confidence in ourselves and in a positive universe has nothing to do with self-reliance, it has to with God.

There, we have finally arrived where you suspected I would head. In all of my readings, conversation and in my own experience I have rarely, if ever, known anyone to take exclusive credit for their leap of faith. That’s right, almost no one I have ever met—including those who have made the most daring and radical changes in their lives credits themselves as the agent of change. All of us know this truth, that the place from which we summon courage, find the conviction to take that leap, to let go of whatever we cling to, is bigger and far more powerful than ourselves. Some of us call this being God, while others may give him a different identity. But there is no mistaking that few of us would credit ourselves alone for the fortitude we drew on in our moment of courage.

As true as this observation is, it is also true that there are times when we let go without courage or conviction; when we are adrift of a strong center. At those times, we can be cast into the pit of depression, hounded by doubt and hobbled by indecision. We are in crisis. It is at times like this we must find our way back; back to that confident relationship we have with our higher selves, with God. In fact, at times like this we are standing still, while God is the one who is moving—coming to us because we cannot go to him.

Perhaps we are driven to our knees with grief, overcome with sadness or bewildered and troubled by events and decisions. That is when he comes, if we ask him to. In truth he is always there but we simply do not see him, or feel his actions in our lives. We are so busy living, leaning on our own understanding and on ourselves that we miss his presence. But make no mistake he is there, waiting quietly for us to stop the chatter in our minds and to listen. Of course he is able to do anything, but he waits on us, because he needs our full attention to do what he will do for us—to restore our center and our well-being.

It would be so much easier if we just listened for him all the time—leaned on him all of the time; we would spare ourselves no small amount of unhappiness and discomfort. But we are humans, and that is a hard thing for us to do--to rely on God and not ourselves. Our egos, vanity, our hubris keep leading us on this path to inattention distracting us with false confidence and trust in our own wisdom. Until it fails, as inevitably it will, and we find ourselves adrift once more.

I’ve written before about trust, and how hard it is to learn to place trust in God. We find it so much easier to trust humans despite all the evidence to the contrary, knowing that as flawed as we are we will let each other down, hurt ourselves and others, exercise bad judgement, inflict pain and receive it. For so many of us it just seems too easy to trust God. We flinch at the idea of saying, God lead me where you will. We want to reserve that to ourselves right up to the moment when we cry out, won’t you please come to me and rescue me from this weight that lies upon me.

Well, let me let me say this, it isn’t too easy, this trusting in God, it is hard and our faith may be tried at times because it is weak. It is hard, but so much easier than relying only on ourselves and other humans for the answers. It is hard, but all you have to do is just let go.