Pit Stop

While I know I've been in a book for several posts now, I'm diverting to refuel and change tires, a pit stop of sorts.  The reasons include a wondrously wacky canine at my feet whose paws just walked alongside me to the home I'm selling down the street.  Also, the book I have been extrapolating for you Scribes happens to be in my bedroom, and I'm in the study at the moment.  Yeah, weak reasons, but sometimes those hints come from Higher Office; and I've learned to listen even if it sounds silly.

Image source:  https://i8.ventures/case-study-the-ferrari-pit-stop-and-the-value-of-shared-goals/

Last year, I was writing lines as they came to me in a simple, inexpensive, week-at-a-glance planner.  I wrote about it in this post.  It is from these scribbles from which I hope to scratch out a bit of wisdom and wit that may stimulate your wellness script-writing.

Old things must pass away so new things can grow.  I spent some time on Monday working on the aforementioned former abode.  I have quite a bit of garden on that tiny bit of landscape, and all of it is perennial.  There's spearmint I've planted around my mailbox, which is such a verdant green and boasts some sweet pollinators in the heat of summer, when many other sources have begun to go dormant.  When dormancy is near, I trim the spearmint back a little and then let it protect the tender new leaves of gloriously aromatic mint as they come up from their winter slumber.  Monday, I ensured sun exposure for those same tender sprigs as spring teases at my imagination.

We do well to release ways of thinking and being in the world when those ways prove themselves faulty, obsolete, or harmful.  As so eloquently put in Hebrews 12:1, let's "cast off" whatever is holding us back, hindering progress, or causing us to stumble in running our own race!  Compost is always intentional and it's often an inconvenient and smelly process; but organic compost causes garden vegetables to thrive.  Composing the "new things" of the garden variety and the glorious all the same requires giving up what is beyond or behind us to be relegated as potential soil.  If you read yesterday's post, you'll find this thought familiar.  Indeed, composing healthy new things is best executed in the compost of the past, clearing away the dried brambles to ensure that light gets into the new things God has planned (Jeremiah 29:11-13; Isaiah 43:18-19).

I've moved from one home to another.  I don't live there anymore; but I'm grateful for the place where I got healing - the physical address and the spiritual access alike.  It's time for another dweller's life to happen there, person(s) for whom I am preparing the place in that vacancy.  What once was is no more; and with thanksgiving, I release that home to the market.  It won't be helpful to keep gripping tightly to things which no longer contribute to my growth or my good; and in fact would be detrimental.

Jotting with Johnna:

• To what might you be holding on, and why?
• Is there a way to remember and reverently release that person, place, pursuit, or possession?
• How might your load be lighter - light enough to run the race set before you - without that weight?

Remember:
Sometimes it is wise to stop carrying something simply because it is heavy and no longer contributes to the abundant life won for you by Christ.  You are so very worthy of the act of releasing that which keeps you from living that life - it came at great price. 

In the words of Jesus, Himself:

"The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows]."
John 10:10
https://my.bible.com/bible/1588/JHN.10.10  

Stay tuned.  Stay focused.  Stay well.