I don’t have all the answers. What I do know is that despite what society says, there is no requirement to abandon yourself to make others more comfortable. You don’t owe anyone a version of you that isn’t true to your soul.

A fully healed heart isn’t something you can force by sharing platitudes or deciding to fake it ‘til you make it. Heart healing is rarely a one-time thing.

Whether I’ve sought the change or it has arrived on its own free will, I remind myself all of the things we’d have missed if we’d tried to hold on too tightly to the status quo. I think about the opportunities that have come from taking chances and letting go.

It was at least ten years ago when I first heard a sermon by Andy Stanley about the concept of “margin.” He talked about the importance of living a life with a lot of margin - a lot of room to make mistakes without suffering life-altering ramifications. He essentially meant installing guardrails in your life, surmising that we’d inevitably cross lines, but if you had your guardrail set so far back from the edge, those missteps were much more likely to be corrected without serious consequence. This concept could apply to many aspects of life - finances, time management, relationships, interactions with others, and even food.

Several years ago I experienced the most pain I’d ever endured in my life. The kind of pain that envelops you, holds you just under the water while you gasp for air. It wasn’t a single incident, rather a series of events over the course of several years. My world felt like it had crashed in around me, and I knew my heart would never be the same.

I stopped going to church several years ago. It wasn’t that we’d had a falling out. We just moved several times in as many years and never found a home church like the one we’d left.

I’ve been learning the fine art of balance in my life recently. Not necessarily intentionally, but life has a way of handing you what you need right when you need it sometimes.