Wrestling at the River: Change & Grief – Week 3: Bargaining

Wrestling at the River: Change & Grief – Week 3: Bargaining

Last week we supposed that one of the sources of anger is loss of control. This week’s phase I believe is a response to that loss of control. Bargaining is an attempt to regain control over the given situation. Bargaining may take place with God, with other people, even with one’s self. But it is always “I’ll give you this if you’ll give me that. “I’ll go to seminary if you’ll let Mom survive this stroke.”  “If Obamacare passes, I’m moving to Canada!” “I’ll let you go if you will bless me.” There is a wonderful little clip from the movie “The Descendants” with George Clooney where his character is begging his wife to wake up from her coma. IT is classic and poignant bargaining. “I’m ready to listen,” he says, “if you will just wake up.”

The complement of bargaining is releasing. Bargaining is us trying to wrest control from an obviously uncontrollable situation. The exit ramp on the bargaining highway is to give up control. As a people of faith, our assurance is that the control is in the hands of a benevolent God. It takes great courage to give up control in the midst of a whirlwind of change. And yet what we call giving up control is just admission that we never truly had control to begin with.

Jacob’s bargaining is not done from a position of power. He had lost the fight, except that he will not let go. He desperately wants a positive result to come from the night’s ordeal (and maybe even from his entire life up to that point?). And it is interesting to note that Jacob’s name change to Israel is not the blessing. His opponent offers the blessing after that exchange, and we don’t have a record of what that blessing was. Dictionary.com says a blessing is the act of invoking divine protection or aid; it seems to me it is something more than that. And it seems to me that God is not stingy about blessing us. I know that is not the impression that the Old Testament gives. Yet when we are in the chaotic grip of change it seems like God’s blessing is hard to find indeed.

So, like Jacob and the angel, what are we desperately holding on to? Despite the pain that the fight causes us, regardless of the wounds that we will carry with us, we hold on hoping to extract some kind of blessing from the situation. Bargaining is holding on. Grace is letting go.

I think our experience this Sunday is in that movement from grasping to releasing. What are we grasping, holding on to that is not really ours to control? How do we find the trust to release?