You're Okay

Healing | Strength | Encouragement | Consolation

Reconciliation 

Chin up
Look people in the eye
Smile
Be Confident

Put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and love.
“Bearing with one another.”

These are some of the things I went into today telling myself. I came out of the day with the same words in a different perspective. I find myself turning on a new playlist and doing some reflecting tonight. There’s something interesting about reflecting on the old while playing a new song. It gives me a chance to see things differently. It also allows me to move on. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love my “old favorites” playlist, but at some point, I have to listen to something new. I’ve heard those lyrics already, played them on repeat; related and processed. It’s time to stop working through them, so I can focus on the path ahead. Strap up my boots, put on a winter coat and take a deep breath of fresh winter air.

There really is a clear path ahead. It just gets hard when you don’t necessarily see it. Or when you feel like you took a wrong turn and halted the progress. It’s okay to admit you were wrong and yet feel okay to plant a new seed of learning so you can start fresh. You can start fresh. It’s all good to mark your path with a stone, not because you need to know your way back, but because you need to know you’ve already gone that way and don’t want to go back down it again. Learning and making better decisions is a good thing.

We were created to grow and keep moving. So, chin up. You’re not as behind as you might think. You’re not as horrible as you might be afraid of. You’re okay, because it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you’re willing to come back from them. You are doing a good job. Nothing defines you if you let it refine you.

I found myself in a spiral of negative thoughts today, and they were all about myself. What I had to realize is that it wasn’t really about me, or at least not in the way I felt. I had to go back to what I wrote in my journal that very morning. Be kind, humble, gentle, patient, forgiving, compassionate and loving, but this time instead of trying to do it for others, I had to accept it for myself. It’s okay to give yourself a little grace. It’s okay to give yourself time to heal and it’s okay to challenge yourself to get a little stronger for next time.

Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Process, but don’t process for too long. Make sure you’re still teachable while traveling the steeper slopes. And keep looking ahead.