free

This may seem a bit cryptic at first, but I just want to say it anyway, and I want to say it in universal enough terms that everyone who reads it may find it applicable, because I think we will all hit a point in our lives where this is true of us. Hopefully it won't, but you never know . . .

Finding out that you are the one who has been holding yourself back from something good is humbling, and maybe a but unnerving. To discover that the prison you find yourself in is one of your own making, and you hold the key, is uncomfortable at first, and I think our tendency is to resist that implication. In my particular case, it was hanging onto something that didn't work out (and for very good reasons), and I let my own guilt about the whys and hows of its seeming failure plague me for most of the past three years, with intermittent times when it seemed like I might be able to salvage it.

Death is a natural part of life, though, and shouldn't instill fear. Sometimes things need to die so that new life can spring forth. And though we don't always know the nature of that new life, as surely as spring follows winter, we can trust that there can and will be life out of death.

And when spring comes, it does no good to stay inside like it was winter, pining for the warmth of the previous summer . . . there is new life all around. Time to free yourself of what once was and embrace what now is . . .