What’s a LIG?
Last time I went to confession, it was just before Christmass. To my great comfort and joy, I discovered not a squeaky clean plaster saint, but a shabby sinner just like myself. Fancy that! Someone who had faced the same delectable tempting scenarios and made the same mistakes as I had. Who’d a thought?
“Lovely looking things tempt us", he said. And he was right, of course. We are so easily seduced by that which looks glamorous and glitzy. The mundane and challenging things are not nearly as appealing, but they are essential, like discipline and forgiveness.
The other takeaway he offered was a simple three-word phrase. ‘Let it go.’ I’ve often shortened it to LIG so that I can remember it more easily. As you get older, your memory becomes a little more unreliable.
At one level, the wise old priest was telling me to let my sin go. The Almighty has already done away with it. Why was I still hanging onto this muck? Because they are entertaining and addictive, but sadly, like last year’s Christmas tinsel, they have lost their glitz and must always disappoint.
But there is another LIG. There are things in our lives that we should let go of. The things that weigh us down and hold us back. The time when old so and so… and the person on the TV who gave/gives us the screaming heebbies. The energy we waste in looking back to when I could have, I should have.
I suspect LIG explains why some use doves and helium balloons at funerals and weddings. The past is set free and let go. And while we might yearn and squint to see them in the sky, ultimately we must LIG. Only then, with verve and joy, are we free to begin afresh.