What the Mud Grows

What type of growth is happening when nothing appears to be changing?

It doesn’t surprise me that my life feels slower and calmer now, and that that slow and calm has sometimes been confused with a state of not moving.

They say calm after the chaos can feel boring.

I think there is truth to that.

It has taken me a while to find the contentment within it because my body and mind had become so accustomed to movement. For so much of my life, movement meant surviving. Solving the next problem. Healing from the last disappointment. Bracing for whatever might come next.

Life was a roller coaster.

The high highs that plummeted quickly into equally devastating lows, followed by seasons of gathering myself back together again.

When you’ve lived that way long enough, stillness can feel unfamiliar. It can even convince you that nothing is happening.

But I don’t think that’s true.

I’ve been spending the last few years sitting with myself and calling back all of the love that I’d given so easily away back to myself.

And it is a work that has required me to sit still.

There are no milestones announcing that your heart has become a little softer toward yourself than it was yesterday.

I’ve sometimes wondered why my life has been so full of extremes, particularly in love and romance.

I know that our lives mold us into the people we become.

All the little experiences that become our story craft us to respond accordingly.

For me, those experiences made me cautious.

Slow.

A little shy when it comes to vulnerability.

I’ve been disappointed and hurt by the friends and lovers I’ve kept close. I know those experiences shaped the way I move through relationships now.

I am very aware of how tender and vulnerable my heart is, and of how few people I actually allow close enough to see it.

Recently, I couldn’t help but think of the lotus.

The lotus is everywhere in spiritual communities. Printed on yoga mats. Woven into jewelry. Embroidered onto t-shirts.

It’s become so familiar that I think we’ve stopped wondering why this particular flower has endured for thousands of years.

The lotus emerges from the mud.

But the mud isn’t just an obstacle the flower overcomes.

It’s the very thing that nourishes it.

Without the mud, there is no lotus.

I wonder if our hearts work much the same way.

Maybe the disappointments, grief, mistakes, heartbreaks, and seasons we wish had never happened aren’t simply things to escape. Maybe they become part of what allows us to grow into someone who can love more wisely, hold better boundaries, recognize what is healthy, and finally extend the same compassion toward ourselves that we’ve so freely offered everyone else.

The lotus doesn’t bloom in spite of where it began.

It blooms because it learned how to grow there.

I wonder if that’s what this quieter season has been.

Not a season where nothing is happening.

A season where, beneath the surface, I’ve been growing roots through the mud, preparing for a bloom that couldn’t have happened any other way.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ♥