EPISTLE II: To The One Who Survived By Letting Go
Beloved,
There are seasons the soul does not choose — only endures.
You remember what it cost you to make it through. Not everything was carried out intact. Some things were released in urgency, not because they lacked value or you wanted to let go, but because survival required it.
In the moment of threat, your heart did what it needed to do: it loosened its grip on what it could not protect so that life itself might remain.
And you have wondered ever since — quietly, painfully, privately — was that loss failure? Was that surrender weakness? Did I mishandle what was entrusted to me?
I recently woke up from a dream that pointed me towards processing my own inner whispers and doubts about all the losses I have taken for nearly 5 years as of now. The highlight of my dream was a new pet gecko that jumped out of my hand, scurried away and I had to carefully hunt it down in a cluttered home — only to discover its detached tail wriggling on my kitchen floor. One of the primary defense mechanisms of a gecko is called autotomy, a process of preserving themselves through escaping intense threat or a predator by releasing their own tail at a fracture point so that the gecko may hope to live.
The intensity of the stress triggers a part of their body to detach in order to preserve their life.
Hear this gently: What you released in order to live was not wasted. It was preserved differently.
I have been walking a very long season that has been marked by death, grief overload, stolen inheritance, family betrayal, impulsive decisions that led to a destructive marriage, abuse, injustice, ruined credit, financial hardship and poor health — however, it has not been devoid of blessings. The latter, nevertheless, does not negate the former.
The joys of living do not negate the lament of surviving. It’s “and” not “or” in the life of a human who can simultaneously experience both grief and joy — we weep with those who weep AND rejoice with those who rejoice.
When we experience tremendous loss, our soul is not simply seeing the glass as half empty, it is being put into a position to question, create space for God to show up, and painfully trust a process we most likely do not understand.
There is wisdom woven throughout the Scriptures that does not always announce itself loudly or even resonate with us until we have personally experienced a season of loss. It speaks of restoration after ruin, in life after pruning, in breath returning to what once lay still or was thought dead.
As it is written in Joel 2:25, there is a God who restores not only what was lost, but even the YEARS that seemed consumed beyond recovery.
This means your story and my story are not defined by what fell away in the crisis. It is marked by the life that remained — and the God who kept watch over it. And God continues to keep watch over it.
You did not fail when you adapted. You were being kept by a God who loves you.
We who are acquainted with loss and letting go know that there is a quiet kind of faith not embodied through bold declarations or visible strength but through continuing to hope — however, faintly — that what was lost is not gone forever:
That what was lost may return in time.
Be restored in another form.
Be redeemed into something deeper than what existed before.
This is not denial — this is trust.
And now you find yourself in a different place — not in the chaos of survival, but in the slow work of rebuilding. Here, the calling is not the same as what it was when you were surviving the crisis. You are not only surviving anymore; you are learning to guard.
We who have survived learn to guard after crisis. We show up more tenderly, more softly, more quietly and more wisely after surviving loss.
As it is written in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
This guarding is not fear. It is divine wisdom.
You are now in a season of learning:
To guard without shutting down.
To care without overextending.
To discern without becoming hardened.
To watch and pray without hypervigilance.
To respond slowly and not react quickly.
To enforce boundaries while still pursuing connection.
To forgive deeply, but not forget the past, while pushing onward.
This is sacred work.
Do not rush yourself out of this place. Do not despise the boundaries you are now building. They are not walls of isolation — they are the careful tending of what is still alive within you. The life in you remained for a reason. Jesus knows that reason.
And what was released in that former season — whether it returns as it once was, or is restored in a new and unexpected way — it rests safely in the hands of the One who wastes NOTHING.
You are living proof that preservation is still a form of grace. And grace, when it has finished its work, always makes room for restoration.
So take heart: you are not behind. You are not disqualified. You are not defined by what you had to let go.
With gentleness and truth, a fellow witness to His keeping,
Imelda — DUST+GLORY
