Every yogi knows that moment when you have to force yourself to let go. You’re muscles are fighting against one another and the pressure is so intense, and you breathe into that pressure and tell your muscle to let go. It’s tenuous at first. Your muscles don’t trust you. They aren’t used to you talking to them or paying them any attention at all. After a while of doing yoga, they learn to trust you and listen to you when you tell them to let go.

When you move into a pose like moon or dancer or warrior one, there is a letting go of the need to have more than one limb on the ground. There is a letting go of the grounding in one foot and increasing the grounding in the other. I feel at those moments that I’m flying. It only comes when I can let go.

Let go of the need to control. Let go of the need to understand. Let go of the need to be the smartest or the best at anything. Let go of the desperation for approval. Let go of the need to be self-sufficient. Embrace interdependence. Embrace your limitations. Embrace the complex relationship you have with others in your life.

Life is a series of deaths and new births. Our world as we knew it died with the birth of the coronavirus. Letting go of the past and what was familiar to us is hard. Embracing an uncertain future can be hard too. The death of an old and treasured plant is always a hard thing for me. My hydrangea on the side of my house is slowly dying. As I feel the sadness of letting go of what was, I embrace the future possibilities of that space in the garden.

Relationships can be like that too. Sometimes it’s important to know when to let go of toxic relationships. It can be especially painful because even toxic people are valuable sons and daughters of God. The pain of what might have been combines with the pain of past trauma, and the loss of an important person in your life. That sadness reverberates on so many levels.

It helps to look at that relationship space and think of the possibilities. The energy and love that you invested in that dying relationship can be diverted into new relationships that will be more healthy and rewarding.

The Savior gives us everything we need in the moment we need it. He gives me sufficient for what I need today in this moment. Enough health, enough strength, enough love, enough patience, enough humility, and enough wisdom to make it through each day. He carries my burdens with me and makes them possible to bare. Sometimes I have to let go of clinging to the blessings that used to be mine. I need to let the past go. Keep the happy memories. Treasure the good times, but throw away the dead and rotting remains of yesterday’s beauty. In a world where everything is temporary, there comes a time to let go. Only then can the future begin.