breakout

Breaking out of a pattern of thinking can require a lot of courage.

Especially if it defines or guides your life.

And it isn’t always possible until you are ready. No one else can do it for you. No one else can make that heart-deep decision.

You may need to work through a lot of ‘baggage’ first. To let go of a lot of things. To understand what you cannot fix. To realise where you are too bruised to allow further damage. To drop the concern about what other people will think.

And in the years, months, days before the breaking it may seem not just impossible but frightening, even wrong. Your desire to conform to your own expectations and the expectations of others can box you to such a degree that you don’t realise – or don’t admit – that you don’t come box-shaped.

To challenge your own deeply held beliefs and ideals (whatever these may be) about certain situations – that takes a new kind of faith. Faith that Truth is not confined to your own culture or mindset. Faith that God is bigger than your tiny worldview. Faith that in our humanity we can try and tin our own complexity for the sake of familiarity or manageability.

Pass the tin opener, please.

Who am I? So easy to ask that question and choose as an answer what we believe is ‘right’ or acceptable. Sometimes we don’t know the answer. But if we feel compelled to put on a face or a front, or hide behind a template of belief or behaviour, out of fear that anything else is wrong – we end up lying, if that is not how we really feel, if that is not who we really are.

I wrote earlier on social media:

Don’t leave living until later.

I mean it.