The Practice Match

Opening yourself up to something new can be scary, whatever that “new” might be.

It’s easy to become attached to what is familiar.

Not because it is necessarily the life we want, but because it is the life we’ve learned how to navigate.

There is comfort in certainty.

There is comfort in knowing where the edges are.

And while I believe there is something deeply beautiful about learning contentment, I also believe there comes a point where contentment quietly becomes complacency if we stop allowing ourselves to imagine that life could expand.

Growth asks us to loosen our grip on the identities we’ve carefully constructed. It asks us to become willing to disappoint people who benefited from us staying exactly as we are.

That has never come naturally to me.

There have been seasons where I made myself smaller because it felt easier than asking others to make room for the woman I was becoming.

I folded myself into spaces that no longer fit, convincing myself that discomfort was simply the cost of keeping the peace.

Many women are taught this.

To anticipate the needs of everyone around us before considering our own. To carry more than our share. To sacrifice in silence.

For a long time, I believed that choosing myself meant I was somehow choosing against everyone else.

I’ve learned that isn’t true.

Choosing yourself is not the same as abandoning others.

Sometimes it is simply refusing to abandon yourself.

Recently, I caught a glimpse of a different life.

It arrived as a possibility more than a promise.

For a brief moment, I allowed myself to imagine what it would feel like to step into something entirely new. To leave behind what had become comfortable.

To build a life I hadn’t previously given myself permission to envision.

The opportunity itself didn’t materialize, and there was a time not long ago when I would have seen that as failure.

Today, I don’t.

Because something far more important happened.

I realized I was willing.

The opportunity disappeared, but the woman who was prepared to step toward it did not.

That version of me is still here.

Perhaps that is why some opportunities appear before us only to disappear.

Not because they failed us.

But because their purpose was never to become our future.

Their purpose was to expand us.

To show us what is possible.

To let us practice becoming the person who is ready when the right opportunity finally arrives.

To remind us that the life we’re living is not the only life available to us.

So yes…

There was disappointment.

There still is.

Some visions deserve to be grieved.

But disappointment has become less of an ending and more of a doorway.

Sometimes life doesn’t hand us the thing we imagined because it wasn’t the destination.

It was the invitation.

The rehearsal.

The practice match that shows us we’re finally ready when the real thing arrives.

And when it does…

I don’t think I’ll hesitate.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend ♥