Grips

LET GO AND LET GOD.

I hate that cliché.  I suppose some might be offended by me and my revulsion toward a slogan they hold so dear.  It’s on bumper stickers; it’s on T-shirts.  I know a particular group of people who truly do their level best to live by that phrase.  They love it, and I love for them.  But I hate it for myself.

I hate it because it’s easy.  I hate it because it’s simple.  I hate it because it’s a trite truism that makes it sound easy and makes it sound simple.

LET GO AND LET GOD.

It is neither simple nor easy.

I don’t know how to let go, and I don’t know how to let God. 

I also don’t know when to let go and I don’t know when to not let go.

I had survived through brown belt without having to pay much attention to the gi.  Most of my Jiu-jitsu had been based on MMA, so no-gi was a more natural fit to the way I rolled.  From time to time I would put on a gi for competition or training.  My no-gi game seemed to suffice even for gi Jiu-Jitsu—it just moved slower and weirder because of all the fabric.

But then I made it to black belt and things changed almost instantly.  My first competition at black belt was against a world champion.  He set me up with a loop choke.  I didn’t respect the grip he had on my collar and didn’t address it.  He choked me.

Not long after that experience, I met another world champion.  I started rolling with him on a regular basis and he became one of my primary training partners and fast friends.  He changed everything about the way I fought.  He taught me to respect grips.

Grips were complicated things to me.  I wasn’t used to rolling as a gi player.  I was used to rolling as a no-gi fighter wearing a gi.  Once, between our rounds, he stopped me and said, “Joel, you need to learn to use your grips.  You roll like a fighter, and that’s fine.  But we’re training in the gi and the gi is about using your grips.  It’s going to feel like you’re cheating, and that’s OK.”

I took his advice.  I started working on my grips.  But I was not natural at it, and I was not good at it.  I seemed to pick wrong every time.

I found myself reaching out and grabbing hold of his collar.  I knew I had done something a little bit right, at least, because he had defended against my grip.  I had managed to grab a fistful of fabric and I was not going to let it go.  I squeezed with everything I had, pulling him forward in an effort to break his posture.  He continued to dig at my hand and try to loosen the attachment, but I held on with everything I had.  He was strong in his base, and I struggled to disrupt it—I pulled and pushed and yanked with everything I could muster in that grip.

He was—he is—an exceedingly talented grappler.  Slowly, he cut through my guard, sliding over my leg toward half-mount.  With my hand still clamped onto his collar, I tried to recompose my dwindling guard, but I failed.  He adeptly maneuvered his hips into position against my will.  My fingers started to tingle and I could feel the muscles in my forearm spasming with effort.  It hurt just to let go—I had to make a conscious effort to release the grip.  It actually required a certain amount of psychic energy to force my fingers to uncurl.  Having retrieved my hand from his collar, I started to build my frames for defense and realized that I had nothing left in that arm.  I had worn that arm out holding onto that useless grip.  I hadn’t known when to let go.

Just a couple days later the two of us were training again.  I was trying to keep myself safe in his incredibly active guard.  At one point, he swung his leg away to generate some momentum with his hips.  I sensed the movement and felt that he was just about to generate some force.  Instinctively, I reached out to grab the material of his pants just at the knee, hoping to slow him down.  As I snagged the fabric, his hand appeared seemingly out of nowhere, ripping at my grip and pulling while his leg magically swung back the other way and landed me in a miserable triangle choke.  I had done exactly what he wanted me to do.   I had gripped at the precise place and moment that he had planned—I know this because he taught a class three days later explaining exactly how he had set that up.  He had set the technique knowing that I was going grip his leg in exactly the way I had.

Another of our many sessions found me working from my (almost) offensive half-guard.  I had managed to weave the corner of his lapel and feed it to my far hand in hope of using it to climb from my elbow to my hand so I could fight to both knees.  I had a deep purchase on that lapel when I felt him reach back and grab my hand, twisting in a slightly wrist-locky sort of way.  I quickly abandoned, letting go of that lapel and reaching for his far knee, instead.

After the round had ended, he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face.  “Why did you let go of that grip?” he asked me.

“I could feel you setting something up,” I frowned.

“I didn’t have anything,” he said.  “You would have had that technique.  You should have held on.”

I don’t know when to let go, and I don’t know when to hold on.  I don’t know when to let God and I don’t know when to make an honest effort.  It perplexes me.  There is a kind of art to knowing when to hold and when to let go.  There is a kind of art, and I am no kind of artist.

Most of the time, I don’t even know what it means to surrender to God.  I have lot of thoughts and ideas in my overactive brain.  I’ve written entire narratives of the places that I intend for God to take me.  All my stories have really happy endings where I come out as the hero and experience minimal, if any, discomfort.  I love these narratives.  I’m a pretty good writer and my personal story of myself might be my crowning achievement.  I’ve become attached to these narratives and the outcomes I have devised.   I know exactly what I want God to do for me and I hate the idea of letting Him write the better story.

Many plans are in a man's heart, but the LORD's decree will prevail. (Proverbs 19:21) 

Thoughts and the ideas are intangible things.  They are powerfully intangible things, certainly, that can drive my behaviors in dangerous directions if left un-surrendered.  There are tangible things, too, that grip me from time to time—the pursuit of material things or experiences that can dominate my thoughts and attitudes.  There are relationships in my life  that I can’t figure out how hard to hold on to or when to let go of.  In short, I don’t know how to let go and let God and I have no idea when to let go and let God.

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act.  (Psalms 37:5) 

I struggle with knowing when to let go, and I struggle with knowing how to let go.

Actually, I should probably amend that…

There are some areas—some times—in my life that I am exceedingly good at surrendering to God.  There are places that even my stubborn and infantile brain has learned to trust God with.  I know that He is leading me down the right path and I am willing to follow Him even into uncertainty.

For I know the plans I have for you"—this is the LORD's declaration—"plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11) 

There are, however, other aspects in my life that I just don’t want to surrender to God.  I find myself holding on to trash that I don’t want to let go of—all those great things that I’ve got my own great ideas for.  I can see the sparkling gems and gold waiting for me, but I have to let go my grip on the rubbish if I want to fill my hands with things of value.  But I can’t let go—I won’t let go.  I like that garbage I’m holding on to.

I might say that it is a battle of wills, but it’s so much more than that.  My will is weak by nature and fights against my spirit.  Sometimes my intellect gets involved and tries to right the ship.  It’s a fight of my intellect against my emotion against my spirit—every one of them fighting each other which is every one of them fighting against me within me.  I am at the purest form of disadvantage as a strive to overcome my own resistance with the power of my own resistance.

It doesn’t make any sense.

Everything in me wants to hold stubbornly to this thing—this relationship, this path, this inclination.  It’s comfortable, it’s exciting, it familiar, or, sometimes, it’s just a thing that I want to hold on to.  I want to control it and take to the place where I know it should be—I want it to take me to the place where I believe I should be.  I don’t want to let it go.  I’m obsessed with it.

I don’t want to let it go, because it doesn’t have a definition or a destination.  I don’t know where this things ends or begins, so I don’t know how to judge its success.  I hold on to it with everything I can—with both hands and my teeth.  I grasp it to my person rather than surrendering it to God and God’s will, letting it almost define my identity.  I don’t want to give it to God, because I don’t trust where He’s going to take me with it.

It’s hard to let go and let God.  He’s far too mysterious and much too unknowable.  I’d rather own my own solution rather than trust it to an enigmatic creator that I’m not sure I can trust—even though He has always proven worthy of my trust.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways!  (Romans 11:33) 

There are some things that are obviously not good for me—those are things that I know I should let go.  They cause harm and they cause damage.  Even if I enjoy them I should let them go.  There are some things that I know I need to hold on to—that I should fight for and be willing to go to war to keep in my life.  The fight to keep those or leave those isn’t easy, but the knowledge that I should fight is full of clarity.

It’s the things that lack clarity that I truly contend with.  What am I holding on to right now that I need to let go?  What do I need to grasp that I’ve loosened my grip on?  How can I tell the difference?  And, once I’ve figured that out, how do I actually let go?

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5) 

Even when I’ve put a name—or a definition—to the thing I’m holding on to…even then, it’s difficult.  I really want to give this…thing…this relationship, this pattern, this habit…I really want to give it to God.  But I also want to keep it for myself.  I want to guard it and protect it and coddle it to myself.  I want to write the story.  I want to tell God where we need to go with this.  I have solutions of my own, and they are awesome solutions.  I’m a great problem-solver, especially when it comes to solving my own problems.

But I’m not.  Otherwise I wouldn’t have these problems to solve.  I’m the one who made this mess out of myself.  What makes me think I could clean up this mess I made?

So, I have to trust God to write the story I can’t.  I have to trust Him to write me.  That’s hard.

I was talking with a friend this week, regaling him once more with a couple of challenges that I’m dealing with right now.  I’ve talked to him about this half a dozen times in recent weeks.  I’m surprised He’s not getting weary of it.  Maybe he is, but he’s a good friend and keeps listening.

“I think this is where God wants me to be,” I told him.

“But you don’t like it,” he replied, “even though you know it’s where God wants you to be.”

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.  (Matthew 16:24) 

No, I didn’t like it.  No, I don’t like it.  But the Spirit in me has told me that it’s where God wants me to be.  It’s uncomfortable and, even, painful.  It’s forcing me to look at myself in a most critical way.  I don’t like it.  But it’s where I’m supposed to be.

I don’t necessarily know that it means to surrender to God.  But I did figure out, recently, the word surrender actually means to open—to open the door, to open my heart, to open my hands.  I need to let other things fill my grips.

In the years I’ve been training with my friend—and I’ve been training with him for lots of years now—he has taught me so much.  He has taught me about transitions and movement.  He has taught me that it’s OK to let go of a grip.  It’s OK because there is another grip waiting.  But I can’t find the next grip if I don’t let go of the first one.  And, sometimes, if I let go of the first grip so that I can move to the second one, I might be ready to go back to the first grip again.  But this time I’ll be ready for it.

I’m not hard to convince that God is engineering good—the best—things for me.  I’m not that hard to convince because my soul knows the truth—it knows that God has designed the absolute best plan for me.  I know that I can let go, and I know that I should let go.  I know that it would be best to let go and abandon all of my desires for control—simply let God take control and lead the way.

But it’s not that simple.  Processes never are.  I think that God is pretty patient with me about such things, though.  The more I let fall into His hands, the more He’s going to show me that I’m safe there in his hands.  He’s going to show me a story that I could never write for myself.  He’s going to blow my mind.

What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:9-11)