I have thought about the words in this photo a lot over the past eight months.
I have shared in previous posts on Substack (here and here) that it was a huge surprise to me that I was struggling to acclimate to a season I had been begging and praying for going on two plus years.
Every day of this season I am being asked to be brave in decisions from selection of Adirondack chairs to which offer do I accept for this upcoming fall semester to do I finally pull the trigger and give up on the poorly designed heat and air system at the cottage and pay the money to start over to selecting an editor for my books to deciding about taking on a potential consulting client to which weight lifting routine should I try next.
While all of those choices might sound random and no big deal. They are neither.
All of them are interconnected in the life I am working to build. A life that is so radically different from the life I have lived the past (now 53) years.
You do not know how much brokenness, old trauma, and flat-out fear is controlling your life until you face your one life, throw everything out the window, and begin again. Parts of it come back, but a lot gets tossed in the landfill. As it should.
So, every small and large decision is another piece of the puzzle I am building where I create a life that suits me. A life I love every inch of…not slivers of…EVERY. Single. Inch.
That, my friends, takes bravery. And though it is not popular to say about one’s self, though it should be, I am proud of myself. Ridiculously so.
In my head, I can hear the song “…every step I take…every move I make…”
Every step does matter in your life because none of us know how many steps we get for this rollercoaster ride of a life God gives us.
Fall down. Learn. Get back up. Try again. Repeat.
Trial and error are the name of the game.
I texted a couple of lines above to a friend this morning, and his response was that he had always thought of it as the weaving of a tapestry. Some threads are gold…some silver…some silk, but all part of it, and all beautiful. I responded with how beautiful I thought his vision was, and he quickly responded I was free to use it. Which makes me smile. Writers pull from everywhere and everything is material.
I digress.
Whether you look at your life as a puzzle, a quilt, or a tapestry, the most important part is to acknowledge that it is your life.
Your one life.
While God creates us, he gives us creative control and free will over our lives. The truth is during hard seasons, many of us would rather abdicate that control and free will to the universe rather than make the hard choices confronting us every day.
Ouch!
I know a little about this.
Back in early 2012, I was just starting to awaken from a long, deep fog. Upon reading my words from that trough of a year, you do not even have to know me personally to know that I was a woman at war with herself. Twelve years ago, I wrote a blog post and in it wrote this line…
Life is about choices…in love, in work, in everything. I don’t want to be anything but me - God help us all - whoever that might be. I want every part of my life to reflect whoever I am. Whoever I was intended to be.
Even today, when it popped up on me, I could feel the confusion, rage, disgust, and defiance in my words from that day.
No one tells you that you are going to go through the five stages of grief before (and during) a major life transition.
No one told me back then, and even though I knew it mentally this time, I was still unprepared. I sense someone reading this might think that is not super helpful, and I would agree.
What I can offer is that it is worth it. If you are building your life around what is important to you, it is absolutely worth it. I say that while I have one leg still in the trench, and I am grunting loudly as I throw the other one over the side. I can already feel the freedom and there are tiny glimpses of joy popping up right behind it.
I wish I had some twelve-step program at the ready to offer others staring down a transition season. Now that would be helpful. What I can offer you is this…
Take your time.
Give yourself grace.
Give others grace who are having to adjust to your changes.
Do not panic.
Put in the work.
Lean on someone(s) who you can trust.
Celebrate every single teeny tiny win. They all matter.
There is no science behind this list. Just a dozen years of intense work and a willingness to peel myself like a grape and share the journey. Also, for all of the wonderful people I have in my life, the lion’s share of this work has been a solo one. For much of it, I did not have the skillset required to source out someone to trust with it, to lean on, and as a result, I have experienced a lot of deep loneliness. So please do not skim over number six above. We were not meant to walk these paths alone.
I am suddenly so aware that it is only in the pain of growth that new things can be birthed.
There must be death before life.
Loss before gain.
Old before new.
Empty before filled.
Blank before beauty.