You are a living thing with sorrows, elbows, and perhaps freckles on your nose. You’re not a factory or machine, not a slip of paper or block of cement. This means as long as you live, you will be growing.
Look at the trees, at the lines in their bark, the veins on their leaves, the way they go through seasons and changes. Spring, summer, winter, fall. They shift and alter, stretch and extend, become more of who they are with each rising of the sun.
When you look back and say, “I should have known better” try not to judge your former self. It is not inherently wrong; it is only an earlier version of you. You would not be who you are now without having been that person at some point.
Perhaps if you could peer into the core of who you are, you might see something like the rings of a tree. You’d remember that year when you went through a drought, the one when heartbreak bent you sideways for a time, the season of abundance when you laughed like champagne bursting forth from a bottle.
To realize you’ve grown is a reason for celebration. It means you are still here, still rooted on this earth. The faithful are, “like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do” (Ps. 1:3).
Every oak that stands tall like a warrior has a past. It was first an acorn in the dirt and dark. That doesn’t diminish its glorious story; it only makes where it is now all the more remarkable.
Gratefully,
Holley
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