This past week, Jana and I took our kids to Disneyworld. We had planned the trip for about 8 months. We read the Disney books. We planned the itinerary. We booked the hotels. We packed the suitcases. And we did all this in secret.

On a Thursday morning, I got up early and loaded the car. We had a regular breakfast with the kids thinking they were going to the next to last day of Vacation Bible School. But when we went outside, we had them stand in front of their backpacks we had put on the ground, each with their own set of Mickey Mouse ears inside. Then the cat was out of the bag, and here was the aftermath:

Two out of three isn’t bad. The boys were giddy with joy. They couldn’t believe they were going to Disneyworld, and they couldn’t believe it was literally happening right then. But then there was the little girl. It did not go quite as well.

She kicked. She screamed. And the neighbors can testify that the cries came over and over again, “I don’t want to go to Disneyworld!” She wanted to go to Vacation Bible School. Really, really bad. She was literally strapped crying into her car seat and forced to go on vacation. To Disneyworld. Funny how surprised work like that, isn’t it? You’ve got in your mind what your day is going to look like. It’s all planned out, right down to the last detail. And you’re looking forward to it. Then – BAM! Something happens that throws off your plans. You aren’t going to do what you’re planned; instead, you’re being subjected to something else. And in that moment, it really doesn’t matter what the something else is does it? All that matters is that the something else isn’t what you were supposed to be doing.

Andi had a point. Going on vacation wasn’t without sacrifice. It wasn’t without loss. She had to let go of something in order to take hold of something, and for her, the letting go was just too much. There’s always sadness in letting go of what you have in your hands for something you can’t see yet.

If you’ll indulge a little spiritualization of the moment here, I had the thought on the way to the airport, with my little girl’s screams still coming from the backseat of the minivan, that this is an interesting microcosm of what the Lord asks of us everyday.

Obedience is a lot about letting go. It’s a lot about living with open hands. The Lord is always, it seems, asking us to let go of stuff. To turn away from the temporary to the eternal. To release that which we are holding tightly to. To die:

“If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).

We look at a passage like this, and we see the loss. Deny yourself. Forgo your dreams. Give up your aspirations. Lay it all on the table and die if you want to follow Jesus. But we mustn’t miss the true emphasis of the passage. Jesus isn’t calling us to loss; He’s calling us to gain. He’s not calling us to sacrifice; He’s calling us to receive. He’s not calling us to death; He’s calling us to life. The loss, sacrifice, and death are only the stopgap along the way. We must lose and die in order to gain and live. We must let go so that we might take up.

And we must do so every single day.

So this day, when God calls me to let go of something because He has something else, I’m going to try not to kick and scream. Instead, I’m going to try and have the confidence in my Father that knows that no matter how painful that letting go might seem in the meantime, I’m turning toward something better in Him.