remembering

It is easy to forget where you have been, especially when you are so busy getting where you want to go. The speed limit, it seems, is so much faster than it was once upon a time and it’s tempting to push hard up against that limit without completely breaking the law.

But you can only run so far, so fast, before you must stop. You must…you cannot go on forever without pausing for breath.

It is in those times of quiet and stillness that we must reflect on where we once were and how it felt to be there. It’s easy to look back with nostalgia filled eyes and the distance of time. It’s easy to brush aside the hurt never resolved or the circumstances of painful choice.

I say this from experience, friends…pushing on for too long without resolution leads to larger problems long term.

If you’ve been with me during my sporadic blogging on this site you know that my blog is my outlet. I share with my words and my words are my heart. In the writing of these posts I release so much emotion to my readers. In turn you inspire me with comments and kind notes and I thank you for that.

While this place, my place, has allowed me an outlet for so many things, those things are still there and still long for attention, even if that attention is tempered by time. Every so often I feel compelled to go back through and read those words again and I am stunned at how far I have come while not coming very far at all.

Today I came across something long forgotten that brought me to grateful tears. It was a comment, never published at the author’s request, left in 2009.  I will not publish it here, but I would like to share a passage that has stayed with me all day:

“I have many times looked at your gorgeous work, but never read your own personal posts. Today I did, and then I read and read back in time and then a half hour later snapped out of the Jen Bebb trance and thought to write a little bit back.. seemed only fair after taking in so much from you that I would share a word or fifty with you.”

We must return to where we have been to best understand where we are going and why. Remembering and honouring that which compelled change is a necessary part of humanity. The only way I have found to keep moving ahead is to invite the past to walk alongside, and not behind me.