I returned to Arkansas last week, just in time to enjoy the fall colors! I want to share some of my thoughts with my clients and former clients:
As I watch the crimson maple leaves float to the ground, I’m reminded that in order for Spring to arrive, Fall has to happen first. In a similar way, in order to new and better things to happen in our lives, we have to experience “fall” with some of our behaviors and attitudes.
“Unless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24)
There are times in life when we realize that we can no longer carry around anger, resentment or other negative feelings. We also realize we have to get rid of those damaging behaviors that hurt others and ourselves. Christ tells us that we have to “die to ourselves”, in order to experience new life. We are continually challenged throughout the scriptures to put away the old, and put on the new. We are told to forget what lies behind, and reach for what is ahead. Over and over, we are reminded “Out with the Old, In with the New”.
Counseling is process through which individuals and couples learn to put away the old habits and behaviors, in order to replace them with more productive behaviors. This all starts in the heart, where attitudes are formed and held. As we seek to put away destructive behaviors, we have to look deep into our hearts and find the attitudes that keep us attached to the very things that we need to detach from.
Father Richard Rohr shares that “creativity and newness of life have a cost, and the cost is what appears to look like death. But really it is not. It is just letting go of one thing to make room for another thing. Loss is always perceived as an enemy or affliction, and looks like what we don’t want. Somehow to embrace loss, spiritually speaking, is to achieve something more and something bigger” (Rohr, 2013).
Is there something you need to let go of to make way for something better?
Deborah (Debbie) Pinkston, Ph. D.