'She let herself go'

Years ago my next-door neighbor was showing me an old photo of a beautiful, slender woman. She offered this update of the woman, who happened to be her mother-in-law: “She has let herself go.”

English is full of idioms, which I have been collecting for a Korean relative who is keen on polishing his language skills: “benefit of the doubt,” “on hold,” “in the black,” “in the red,” “in the mood,” “off the hook,” “up the creek,” “take the rap,” “come to light,” “fit to be tied,” etc. For the most part, these are dead metaphors that overuse has dulled us from seeing afresh.

But for some reason, when Beth said, “She let herself go,” it struck me with chilling literalness. I pictured a person who has been holding onto something precious for a long time but who finally gave in to forces too strong for her and was swept away with the tide.

In the case of the woman in the photograph, the clear implication was of a release of physical disciplines: the woman stopped tending to her hair, her body, her weight, her general appearance, perhaps. I say it was “chilling” because it dawned on me that letting oneself go is a lonely choice in the heart that a troubled person makes. Hope is being resigned.

In all likelihood, none of one’s acquaintances sees the exact moment in the person’s soul when she gives up on something. There was probably a long period of white-knuckling, finally culminating one unexceptional day during a walk from the house to the car. Who knows?

But what cannot be gainsaid is that the unseen choice in the internal realm has ramifications in the external realm. Not right away, of course. For a little while the decision to abandon a certain ideal will not be evident, perhaps even to the doer, at some level—the person will appear as his or her old self to everyone.

In the course of time, someone will wonder—but not be sure—if he is seeing a difference in old Bob. Like C.S. Lewis said in another context, when we turn up the heat in a cold room, by the time we notice we are feeling warmer, it has already been going on for a while.

My interest here is not the physical, or weight gain, or the giving in to wrinkles and cellulite. I am thinking, rather, that the same kind of “letting oneself go” can take place in a person’s faith in Christ if one is not careful. We can become so wearied in our struggle against sin (if indeed we ever struggled at all!) that we “let ourselves go.” No one notices at first; we still go through the motions. But we have stopped fighting the good fight that Paul said we must fight to the end.

Let us be vigilant against “letting ourselves go.” No one ever woke up in the morning and decided to become an adulterer or a murderer. Likely it happened seamlessly, quietly, without fanfare, without sudden turnings, when a person chose one day not to lift a finger to resist. The fall wasn’t fully conscious apostasy. The woman simply let herself go.