Starting Over

I've been thinking a lot about my relationships lately. In fact, i have spent the past year evaluating everything in my life.

I have questioned God. Family. Love. My marriage. My children. Everything. EVERYTHING.

It has certainly been an exhausting undertaking. Much like uprooting an entire garden and re-landscaping from scratch. Except it's an easier process when you aren't hanging on to any of the old plants in it. It's more difficult when you have existing plants you can't and don't want to get rid off. When it's a completely new garden patch, it's just blank soil. You can plant whatever, wherever you want. But a garden that is being re-done has plants that need to be carefully re-located or appropriately left where they are. I WOULD like to start over AS IF it's my first day on the planet except it's not - not when i already have existing relationships and along with them accompanying beliefs, values and responsibilities that cannot be merely discarded in pursuit of a new direction in my life. And so I've had to work through everything and rediscover the right place for the old plants in my new garden landscape.

Having spent the first 20 years of my life in an authoritarian setting, reacting and responding to the choices of those in charge of my wellbeing, i had developed a habit of looking outside myself for approval and acceptance before deciding if something was permissible or beneficial. But more often than not this had led me to spend a good many years tending to weeds and over-growth from choices that were more compromises than my true desires. Once i saw that clearly, i decided that this habit had to be the very first to go..even though it seemed to be the backbone of my belief system.

It was scary at first, going against all i had ever known. But gradually, with every breath that became lighter within me, it became easier. And gradually it also made easier the task of sifting out all the other parts of me that no longer fit into my new garden. I look back now with a sense of understanding to it all. No more hurts, regrets and guilt. I am no longer ignorant of the vital personal need to draw healthy boundaries even with the people i love most. And in fact, having the ability to define my own garden has allowed me to get better at giving others the space to define their own gardens too.

Yes, I've been thinking a lot about my relationships lately. In fact, i have spent the past year evaluating everything in my life. And today, i know exactly where i stand - at the threshold of a beautiful garden i can truly call my own, a haven for my God-given soul. I am comfortable in my own skin at last, for finally..it contains all that is genuinely ME.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~ Maria Robinson