What happens when plans are jumbled up, you don’t know what tomorrow holds, and you face the unknown?  There are no promises.  How can you do it without fear?  You can’t until you trust yourself.  Believing you have no control is absolutely wrong.  We have more control than we are led to believe.  Much of what happens is a consequence of what happened in our past.  We cannot change it, but we can look at it, own it, and learn from it.  We can accept that we did the best we could at the time.  We can ask for forgiveness if we hurt someone.  We can forgive those who hurt us.  Forgiveness cleans the slate and gives us a chance to start over.  We remove toxic people from our lives.  We keep people who feed our spirit.  We learn we have rights.  We learn to be assertive without being aggressive.  We learn how to take care of ourselves and let others be responsible for their actions and consequences.

Starting over is difficult.  Few people would choose to be knocked flat out with the grueling task of deciding what to keep and what to throw away.  What matters?  When life is good everything seems to matter… then suddenly not so much.  We become selective.  Relationships matter.  Health matters; being self-sufficient matters; feeling peaceful matters.  Once we recognize and loosen our grip on past we can move forward. It takes discernment and an openness to change.  We can have love and support, but we are alone.  No one can do it for us.  We must dig deep.  For Christians, it takes listening to the whispers of the Holy Spirit.    For others, I’m not sure what it takes, but still I’m sure it’s a solo journey.

My daughter is on that journey.  She is sharing with me things she didn’t realize until she dug deep.  I was in that past with her, but even so her journey was solo.  As she moves forward rebuilding her physical, mental, and spiritual life I walk beside her, but I can’t do it for her.  That for me is a most difficult truth.  While she is learning, she is teaching me.