Lissen: evidence that healing is taking place in your life is when you can see old messages from past loves and birthday cards written from former friends and smile. Genuinely smile at those words and remember those times and receive those words for what they were then even though the relationship ended or the friendship came to a close.
So much about life is seasonal. Why would our human connections be exempt from seasons too?
As a gardener, I experience the power of seasons in tangible ways because of what I plant, cultivate, and harvest. Some things grow year-round and continue growing. I have a rosemary Hercules bush that started out as a baby plant more than three years ago. It continues to GROW, year-round, pushing past all the elements of the seasons central Florida throws its way…hot, arm-pits-of-Hades summers and some unexpected, frost touching cold winters. It goes with these seasons and it keeps GROWING. It anchors its roots in deep and it lives and thrives in season with me.
Other plants grow for three to four months, bear their fruit and produce (or not cause plants be finicky sometimes too if they don’t have what they need even though you try to support them) and then they give up the ghost and that season is over. My watermelons and tomatoes be like this sometimes.
Seasonal. When it’s good, it’s so good. And when the season is up, it’s done. It took me a while before I understood in my later 30s the cycles of seasons and what they actually are when it comes to people. Some are destined to journey with me through decades because God designed our journeys this way.
And some will only intersect with me for a season. That season could be three years or it could be three months. Even if I wanted them to be with me longer. I was given…a season. And then…change opened a new door. Hmmm, well now. Perspective is everything.
And…letting go of someone, be it a relationship romantically or a friendship that has run it’s course, sometimes means going forward so you can become who you need to be. Seasons show me this.
The past three weeks brought me more emotions than I anticipated the month of February would deliver. But often, that’s exactly what life is – Unexpected. Unrelenting. Upsetting. Unsure. But it’s also other things too – Good. Healing. Surprising. Sweet.
I found myself over the last 21 days walking with the Lord through some intensely deep and at times heartbreaking moments involving someone who once was a part of my life. What has comforted me most is knowing God saw those 21 days before I even entered them. He saw them. He saw me. He knows me and He knows how I would walk into this experience, first as the incredibly deep thinker I am and then as the uniquely connected feeler I am.
Both parts are special gifts He’s intentionally placed inside me. During the last three weeks though, sometimes I was like “God, being made like this, to be such a deep thinker and deep feeler is making this experience so incredibly hard to walk through. This would hurt less if I wasn’t wired like this.”
I could imagine from God’s view those very gifts of being uniquely wired as a strategic thinker and highly emotionally intelligent very well helped me navigate the unexpected emotions and realities I had to face in this experience in a healthier way. I took an emotional intelligence test recently and it revealed out of a high-end score of 130 on the EQi scale, I scored a 124. Mercy. I’ve been made to acutely sense, understand, and communicate my emotions and the emotions of others very well, which shapes the way I move in the world. God made me a highly emotionally intelligent being. On purpose.
If I wasn’t wired in these unique ways as a thinker and a feeler, my experience of everything the last three weeks would have been, could have been so much more difficult. But as I reflect on how I navigated through the pain and the surprise, I realize I gave myself what I needed to work through the experience.
I prayed. A LOT. I talked to God about everything. And He listened to my hurt, my anger, my pain, my loss, and my recognition and acceptance that a move toward a finality I had never thought about or wanted would be necessary for me to move forward.
I walked and I listened to myself move my feelings out of my body as my steps pushed movement into my feet. Movement sometimes helps me connect even deeper to what I’m feeling and I meet a lot of truth after some miles have been made.
I journaled and connected my feelings to my thoughts…which yielded 22 pages of reflection, emotion, and truth that helped me to let go and invited peace into my heart.
I processed with my inner circle and they prayed, listened, and comforted me with the kind of love and steadiness that only comes through authentic relationships.
I cried and I let myself feel what those tears had to say. Some of the saying was hurt. Some was disappointment. And some was the sweet release that’s given when forgiveness is offered in the midst of brokenness.
I rested in the strong foundation of wellness that I’ve built with intention into my life over the last year and three months. A foundation that poured into my health, gave me focus for what I hold high with value, and the purposeful actions that allowed me to love myself so well with self-care. That foundation was readily available for me to lie back on when my thoughts and my feelings were too much for me.
I realize that the gift of love gives us so much. It gives us beauty and unspeakable joy. But it also gives us the risk of being hurt. Because where our love goes also goes our hearts and our feelings and our emotions. Those beautifully invisible things wrapped in all three that are full of incredibly vivid color when we are so happy it feels like our hearts are gonna explode. Happiness emerges that etches itself in the sky blue backdrops of the best days ever, days that you want to last forever that feel like sunshine and embraces and good things you only dreamed about that finally happened and you want that feeling to just last forever because it was just that good.
Those moments are SO GOOD.
But the days that unexpectedly come that are their foils feel so terrible, just as the good felt so wonderful. Sometimes love also means experiencing deep hurt. Opening yourself up to the happy and the joy may include more than just those things.
What I’m finding true for me is that I’m willing to risk for good love. I want to risk well. With wisdom, discernment, hope, and courage.
I consider this truth as I risk: “When has loving anyone ever exempted us from pain and challenges?” I’m learning that love doesn’t bring that hurt and pain. But caring for someone, opening yourself up to vulnerability, being willing to connect relationally to someone beyond yourself – that is where the chance to breathe in heartbreak can come.
And the caring is because we feel and we feel because we’re human. I’m learning to continue to live and lean more strongly into the sweetness of my humanity. For in it I’m seeing so much of who I really am. And I’m deeply loving who I’m discovering, tears, happy, beauty, and so much more.
I’ve been thinking about the lives we live and the ones we want. I’ve been thinking about the lives we have and the ones people tell us we need. I’ve been thinking about womanhood and wifehood and motherhood and careerhood and singlehood and where I am and who do I want to continue to be.
I think sometimes we believe this narrative about being women that goes like this: “When I get married and I have children, I’ll be a real woman. I’ll be complete. I’ll be living my very best life.”
I think that narrative is a deficient and a defective one. And here’s why: Life never comes in a complete, perfectly wrapped box with matching bow.
It never comes that way. EVER.
Things don’t move in a linear direction. Hiccups come. Road blocks surface.
Speed bumps slow you down. New paths open up that you didn’t even expect you’d be walking upon. Incredible opportunities arise that you couldn’t have created for yourself if you tried.
I just think we’ve got to free ourselves up from these narratives that say “this life is the better life, it’s the one you gotta have and until you do, you won’t really, truly, deeply be as happy and fulfilled as you could be.”
Instead, we need the narratives, as women, that say “THAT life is a good one, and THIS life is a good one too.”
My life and my woman-ness as a single is still LIFE. It’s still LIVING. Woman-ness as a married is still LIFE. It’s still LIVING. Woman-ness as a married and as a mother is still LIFE. It’s still LIVING. The latter two are not a better life or the very best possible life, they are just a DIFFERENT LIFE.
We need to shift the narrative from DIFFERENT = BETTER, and DIFFERENT = the PRIZE that you must pursue.
Perhaps, in this season of singleness what I’m learning is a gift, in and of itself: finding more of me, discovering what makes my heart beat, and growing more and more into the “whoness” that uniquely makes me the woman I’m continuing to become.
Women have got to learn how to free each other up in these narratives.
Lord willing, when marriage comes knocking at my door at the right time, I will answer and I will, by God’s grace, be ready for that very big adventure.
But you know what else I’m gonna do? I’m gonna speak into the hearts and souls of single women in my life and within my influence and I’m gonna tell them to keep pursuing the life that they have. Keep thriving, keep flourishing, keep growing in the beauty that you are.
This life, right now, is your very best life.
Believe this.
Anything that will happen to you next is an EXPANSION on the very best life that you’re already living. Expansion. Not Completion. Expansion. Live out that expansion from the wholeness you already live from. There is depth and beauty and goodness and richness already at home in your soul.
Marriage doesn’t make your life a very best life. Motherhood doesn’t make your life a very best life. If it did, what would we say to the woman who never gets married? The woman who lost her new husband six months into their marriage? The widow burying the love her life after 50 years of partnership? What would we say to the woman who wants to get pregnant but cannot carry children in her womb? The mother who lost three babies in miscarriage? The mother who has adult children but is estranged from them?
What would say to them?
What would we say?
I hope we would say your life is beautiful and its very best because YOU are in it. You are using the gift of this life from God by living it every day. Your living makes this life its very best life.
If you need these words, let them cover you and remind you of what’s true. Selah.
Sometimes relationships end because they were unhealthy and at some point you became healthy and you changed.
The change meant the dysfunction you brought to the table was now replaced by better thinking, healthier interactions, and a more grounded you.
When you’re unhealthy you can live in dysfunctional relationships and friendships with other people. But when you become healthy and you find those relationships don’t progress with you it just might be they were never meant to.
Some things are seasonal. Berries. Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks. And connections with some that can’t move forward into your future.
You’re different. Healthy. Better. They could be different. Healthy. Better too. And maybe independent of each other you realize what held you together in past days is gone, diffused and unneeded, because you both are very different people now.
And if you try to go back to the nostalgia, to the memories of what used to be because yeah, maybe those were great days full of great laughter, and you hope the memories of the past can hold together the rupturing realities of your present, don’t do it.
Let it go. Let that person go. Let it go.
It will be a tough road but it will also be incredibly freeing. There’s a rest and peace that comes with letting people go.
Sometimes you just “got to leave the party.”
I’m learning that leaving doesn’t mean I’m not a good friend and I don’t love well. Leaving keeps my heart healthy and ready for new seasons and new relationships.
Now when I let go of fading relationships, I’m finding more truth by reviewing if dysfunction was present at some point. If I was unhealthy in those relationships at some point. I’ve done this recently and the observations were stunning.
Was dysfunction present? Yes.
Did I see it then? No.
What changed? I became healthy in various areas of my life.
What happened to the dysfunction? I grew into wellness and as a result, created a shift in these relationships.
Was it easy to let go? It’s never easy to let go when you bond with someone. But I’m learning letting go makes space for better things to begin in my world.
Be grateful for the relationships that you have to let go. Think about how they changed you for the better and allowed you to become more of the you that you are today.
You schedule a dentist appointment. Then the days wind down to that either dreadful or anticipated day, depending on how you view dental visits. I like to put in extra effort on my teeth the morning I head to the dentist. As if my extra brushing and flossing is going to take away all the dark chocolate I ate months prior.
What hilarity.
When I was younger, a dental hygienist told me, “floss the teeth you want to keep” and showed me how to properly floss my teeth and go under my gums. Her words stuck with me. They make me think about the intention that’s needed to keep healthy things in our lives moving at a constant pace.
What if I applied the same set of words to my writing, running, and relationships?
Write the words you want to keep.
Run the miles you want to keep.
Invest in the relationships you need to keep.
I think the “need” in relationships challenges me. It’s easy for me to be intentional about the relationships I want. The ones I need are a little different. I don’t always see my need for them, likely because I don’t want them. Especially if the work it takes to do them is hard. And relationships are just hard sometimes.
Relationships are these glorious personal mirrors God uses to show me who I am. Sometimes I love these mirrors. What I see blesses me in the life and connection I experience with people who want to know me.
Other times I don’t want to look at the mirrors. They show my disappointments in people. They show me “me.” I don’t want to look at the hard and the difficult when relationships don’t work out. When they stall out. Even when they die.
But the mirrors are good and they are necessary. I need to see myself, what I bring to situations that’s good and what I bring that ain’t so good. And I need to be willing to let go of stuff that won’t help me invest well in the relationships I want and the relationships I need to keep.
How do you need to “floss” in your life this week?
I think the “need” in relationships challenges me. It’s easy for me to be intentional about the relationships I want. The ones I need are a little different. I don’t always see my need for them, likely because I don’t want them. Especially if the work it takes to do them is hard. And relationships are just hard sometimes.