Psalm 46:10 sounds a well-known call:

Be still, and know that I am God.

“Be still” might seem to urge us to rest quietly. But no, the Hebrew verb means: Decisively let go, or abruptly cease, something strenuous you are doing.

One picture that comes to mind: releasing a tug-of-war rope.

Some English translations try to capture this meaning:

Cease striving [Or, Let go, relax] and know that I am God. (NAS)

Let go of your concerns! Then you will know that I am God. (GW)

That’s enough! Now know that I am God! (CEB)

Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God. (MSG)

At a critical point in my life, God used Psalm 46:10 to confront me about a tug-of-war rope sometimes called enmeshment. Robert Firestone and John Bradshaw have used the term fantasy bond.

Regardless the label:

• It’s a counterfeit for intimacy that wreaks havoc with identity and boundaries.
• It requires you to be the person someone else needs, or expects, you to be.
• It refuses to allow you to know or to be who you are.
• As long as you go along with it, or try to stand against it, your identity is being dragged under by it.

Most often, enmeshment happens parent-to-child. It can occur family-system-to-child or even abusive-culture-to-child. It can also happen adult-to-adult.

In essence, enmeshers seek to control others by absorbing them. They try to deal with their own identity and intimacy issues by erasing the boundaries and blurring the identity of someone close to them. What’s more, enmeshers offer an oppressive counterfeit of intimacy that makes clear: Not being abandoned requires living out a story I have made up as to who you are.

The fantasy bonds that result from this dynamic can keep us entangled all our lives in a toxic family system or culture, including a church culture. And in families or cultures, the pattern can be repeated generation after generation.

This tug-of war, no one wins. Wherever enmeshment encroaches, everyone involved is diminished and hindered from becoming who God created them to be.

The way that looks and the problems it produces can vary, family to family, person to person.

As I’ve pressed in to God in recent years, I’ve seen much I was not looking for, some of it very hard to see. For one thing, I’ve seen the destruction this identity-gutting thing has caused in my life.

Now, I do not agree any longer to give in to it, OR to struggle against it. By the grace of God, for the honor of his name, I decisively let go.

Doing so, I realize: the false guilt, false responsibility, confusion and fear that enmeshment has embedded in my life won’t just vanish. But here’s what does happen:

Every time I let go of something God says is draining me of energy and life, I admit my helplessness to conquer or fix it. I open myself to know him who can and will set all things right. I invite my soul to choose against what it has believed to be true and to trust him who embodies grace and truth.

As I walk out that decisive letting go, I come to know, by faith and experience, him whom Psalm 46 describes:

God is my refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore I will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.

There is a river [the Holy Spirit!] whose streams make glad the holy place where the Most High dwells [his people]. God is within me, I will not fall; God will help me at break of day.

The Lord Almighty is with me; the God of Jacob is my fortress.

Letting go of the counterfeit, I gain real intimacy, and my true identity. I know that he is God. I know the God he is.

***

The original version of “A Decisive Letting Go” was published on January 10, 2012.