Naomi's Letting Go

Ruth 1

The saying, “If you love something set it free- If it comes back to you it’s

yours. If it doesn’t it never was.” This saying is something to think about.

Sometimes we tend to hold on too tight to the things we love, out of the fear

of losing them. Yet when we do that, we run the risk of essentially losing what

we so dearly love.

In Ruth chapter 1, we read about a woman named Naomi who teaches

us about this concept of letting go. Naomi was at one point, married to a man

named Elimelech, and together they had two sons named Mahlon and

Chilion. At some point though Naomi’s husband died and she was left with

her two sons. Her sons then married two women whose names were Ruth and

Orpah, and ten years later her sons also died. Naomi was then left with no

family except her two daughters-in-law.

Naomi decided to go back to the land of Judah because she had heard

the Lord was providing food for the people, after long years of the famine in

the land. So, one day she gathered all her belongings and with her daughters-

in-law set off. As she was making her way, the Bible says Naomi turned to her

daughters-in-law and said, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with

me. May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her

husband.” She then kissed them both and they started to cry saying they

wanted to go with her and they would stay with her. Naomi again to them

said, “Return, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Have I yet sons in

my womb, that they may be your husbands? Return, my daughters! Go, for I

am too old to have a husband. If I said I have hope, if I should even have a

husband tonight and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were

grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters; for it

is harder for me than for you, for the hand of the Lord has gone forth against

me.” These three women then cried some more, and in the end, Orpah

decided to go back home. Ruth, as we will read about next, chose to stay with

Naomi.

What is so incredible about Naomi is that even at the lowest part of her

life, she chose to let the last two people she loved and cared about go. She

chose to think about what they needed, what their future would be like if they

stayed with her and she wanted more for them. She chose to not think about her own needs, and she let go of any loyalty she felt they might have owed her

and let them go. It would have been very easy for her to not say those things

to them. To just keep them around because of her love for them, for

companionship and for help, and yet she didn’t. Naomi loved those two

women more than she loved herself and that is why she said what she did to

them that day. She chose that day to give them their freedom so that they

would have a chance at a better life, a chance to start a family and not be tied

down to their past. A chance to live their lives and be happy and hopefully

start over. Orpah, as we read about, chose to go and one need not judge her

for that because she was not wrong. Ruth though chose to stay with Naomi.

For us as mothers and even mothers-in-law of today, we need to also

have the mindset of Naomi. That even though we love our children and want

them around us, and may even have our own ideas about how their lives

should be, we need to let them go. We need to, at the appropriate time, allow

them to be who it is God created them to be and actually give them our

blessing to go forward with their lives. Not that we are to be cut off from our

children and never have any interaction again with them but to, at that certain

point, give them the freedom to live. Doing that for Naomi had to have been

very difficult, because for her they were all she had left and yet again she was

willing and determined to do the right thing. She could not help that Ruth

would stay with her, but at least she had given her the opportunity to go, and

to go in the reassurance that it was ok to do so.

So, know your children will always be your children and nothing can ever

change that, but by letting them go to be who they were intended to be is the

right thing to do. Be then excited to hear one day of their many life

experiences that they will share with you, and you will then find out they really

never left you either!

From The Noble Woman Book, by Gina Burns.