If you need a little taste of the pain you will create when you do not allow yourself to grow, stick your feet in the shoes you wore to your high school prom.
-- Iyanla Vanzant

You still run with your high school buddies trying to do the same stuff you did back in the day. Of course it’s more than 20 years later; you’re 50 pounds heavier; your stamina is lacking, and your instincts are sharper, but your reflexes and response time are slower and suspect. That’s why pulling the same sorry stunts from 20 plus years earlier land you on your bad back and soft butt every time you try them.

You believe that if you buy that thing, people will regard you as prestigious, influential, successful, and powerful – all traits you’ve sought for many years. Of course it’ll max your credit card again, and you’ll have to borrow from your parents for next month’s mortgage bill. You’ll have to eat Ramen noodles for awhile, but they’re not so bad, right? And what’s a month or so without electricity? It’s not cold out right now and candles would be romantic and soothing while you sat with that thing you bought.

He said he’d never do it again, that there’d be no next time. So you took him back, again. Now, bloody with a cracked rib and broken jaw, he stands on the other side of the door begging you to open it and let him come back home. She’s beautiful, sometimes too beautiful to be with you, you often think. She thinks so too and uses every occasion to step out on you. But you take her back each time and each time she steps back out.

If you do what you’ve always done, they say you get what you always got. You get nothing and nothing is stagnation personified. You get emptied and emptiness leads to filling up on whatever comes your way, which may again lead to nothing.

What if the caterpillar refused to shed the skin that was to become her cocoon, the place that perfectly nurtured her growing body and spirit? What if winter’s trees remained bare and dry during every season of the year? What if the seasons decided to stay stuck on mid-February winter? What if a spring bud remained tightly closed and never bloomed, repressing itself because it was afraid to be or show something other than a bud? Fortunately for those of us who are lovers of beauty, God’s supernatural power gives all these things sense enough to grow and evolve. Each by the hand and breath of God finds something within itself to push out in search of a better day, a larger perspective, greater freedom, and boundless beauty. And you can imagine that change can’t be easy for any of them either – the transition from winter to spring does bring out the sap eating bugs, and it’s definitely lonely in a cocoon. But why run the risk of losing out on blessings, newness, and opportunities because change is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and unpredictable? Take a lesson from nature – grow, evolve, advance, improve.

Better yet, think of your size 6 high school prom shoes on your size 10 feet. Let them go; get new shoes.

Sadiqqa © 2007