{bitter and sweet can exist simultaneously}

Dear future me,

You are currently about to enter another time known as a learning experience. It may begin to feel like an anxiety attack, a period of darkness and question. It may feel like stretching, like joy and excitement at open possibilities. It might sometimes feel like insecurity and doubt; confusion sometimes accompanied by answers, sometimes maybe not.

The point is, you have two choices.

You can choose to float around being all half-hearted and unintentional. You can choose to be a victim of circumstance, you can choose to be lazy and selfish and think of how much this hurts or how hard it is. You can close your front door and never leave your living room. While you practice the art of comparison, you can belittle yourself for absolutely no sound reason. You can sit your little tush down and choose to watch your life and opportunity pass you by and proceed to make bitter or sad comments as you live in what might have been.

You can keep looking at the picture of the life you have always thought would be and hold onto it for dear life, but you might someday be only left with that picture. You can choose to suffocate.

Or.

You can turn and face it intentionally. You can open up your mind and your spirit to growth. You can listen well and speak little. You can believe that you are not defined by your circumstance, but by what you do in that circumstance. You can seek wisdom in this time of change and accept what you can and cannot do. You can open up your heart to the hope you have that life is a journey and what makes it exciting is the not knowing what, but always knowing the who. You can be grateful each day for what you are, where you are coming from and the people you have around you. You can experience life authentically and fully and invite the bumps and confusion in as companions of coming to know yourself and your God more. And with intention you can choose to let this be a teachable moment that you cherish and remember, that you gain wisdom and truth from, that shapes you into a better woman and refines you in a way only this circumstance can.

You can let that picture you have been holding onto so tightly float to the ground. You can let it morph or change like a hologram. You can quit painting pictures, actually. You can choose to live.

So, as you approach the end of something, let it be known to yourself, it could also be the beginning of something else just as great, if not more so. Let it be life giving change, not a ticket to suffocation and stagnancy. We all know how well that (didn't) work out last time. And don't forget to remind yourself that you are worth more than that, whatever low bar of worth you are measuring yourself by, throw it out, because it is bigger than that. Worth is so much more than what you go through, and the journey is the best part.

You have two choices...

love,
former self.