Making room for the life that's trying to find you.
Two or three times a year, I become absolutely ruthless with my closet.
I pull everything out. I try things on. I make piles. I find things I forgot I owned and occasionally stare at something wondering why on earth I bought it in the first place.
Then there are the harder pieces.
The beautiful dress that still looks brand new.
The blouse I spent too much money on.
The pants I keep telling myself I'll wear again.
Nothing is wrong with them. That's what makes getting rid of them difficult.
They simply don't fit my life anymore.
I used to keep those things.
I'd push them toward the back of the closet and tell myself maybe next season. Maybe I'll find somewhere to wear it. Maybe I'll feel differently about it later.
Meanwhile, the closet would become fuller and fuller with clothes belonging to versions of me I had already left behind.
I've gotten much better at this.
Now I know that when I clean out my closet, I need to leave a little empty space.
A few bare hangers.
An open shelf.
Room in the drawer.
Because eventually something new will come along, and I've learned there is little joy in bringing something new home only to discover there is nowhere to put it.
Funny how long it took me to realize I was doing the same thing with my life.
I think we do this more often than we realize.
We ask for new opportunities while our calendars are packed with obligations we don't even want anymore.
We pray for peace while continuing to entertain relationships that disturb it.
We say we want to grow, yet we're terrified that growth might change where we live, who we spend time with, what we believe, how we work, or even how people see us.
We want the new season.
We just want everything from the old season to come with us.
And sometimes it can't.
That doesn't automatically make the old thing bad.
I think that's where we get stuck.
We're waiting for something terrible to happen so we'll have permission to leave.
We want the friendship to explode.
The job to become unbearable.
The relationship to completely fall apart.
We want some dramatic sign from God written across the sky:
GO.
Then we could leave without guilt.
But sometimes nothing terrible happens.
Sometimes something simply stops fitting.
And I've learned that can be reason enough to pay attention.
There was a relationship in my life that I stayed in much longer than I should have.
And the truth is, I knew.
I knew it wasn't going anywhere.
I knew he didn't want what I wanted.
I knew I was trying to turn something into a future that it was never going to become.
But I kept chasing it, Maybe if I loved differently, if I waited, if the timing were different.
Maybe, Maybe, just Maybe.
Looking back now, I can see how much energy I spent trying to convince a closed season to reopen.
And here's the part that makes me shake my head today:
Had I gotten exactly what I was asking for, I would have been miserable.
The relationship I was fighting so hard to keep would never have given me the life I eventually found.
I couldn't see that then.
God could.
And thank God He knew better than I did.
I think that's one of the hardest truths about moving forward.
Sometimes we're asking God to preserve the very thing that's preventing us from receiving what's next.
We can't imagine life without it because we haven't met the life on the other side of it yet.
That's frightening.
Familiar pain has an address.
We know where the light switches are.
We know which floorboards creak.
We know how to survive there.
The unknown doesn't offer us that kind of certainty.
So people stay.
In neighborhoods they've dreamed of leaving for twenty years.
In jobs that stopped challenging them a decade ago.
In friendships held together entirely by history.
In churches where they no longer feel spiritually nourished.
In family traditions no one actually enjoys but everyone is afraid to be the first person to change.
Sometimes we even stay loyal to beliefs we've never personally examined.
We inherited them, so we keep them.
Someone we loved believed it.
Someone with authority taught it.
Everyone around us accepted it.
So questioning it feels dangerous.
I understand that.
Religion is one of the places where I've had to ask some of my hardest questions.
There are things I grew up believing about God, faith, and religion that I no longer believe in the same way today.
I've watched human beings add rules, traditions, interpretations, fear and, at times, their own agendas to something that was supposed to bring us closer to God.
And my own experiences forced me to ask:
What do I believe because I have encountered God for myself...and what do I believe simply because someone told me I should?
That wasn't rebellion for me.
It was maturity.
The God I have encountered through some of the darkest experiences of my life is far greater, more merciful, more present, and more intimate than the version of God I understood when I was younger.
I had to give myself permission to ask questions.
Some answers strengthened what I already believed.
Others changed me.
But I could no longer pretend that growth meant never examining anything.
Maybe that's what growing really asks of us.
Not to throw everything away.
Not to become someone completely unrecognizable.
But to become willing to look at our lives honestly.
Does this still fit?
This relationship? This belief? This routine? This dream? This very definition of success?
This version of me?
And perhaps the hardest one:
Am I staying because I still belong here, or because I already know how to survive here?
I've never been particularly afraid of moving. I've taken risks. I've left places. I've walked away from people when I knew I needed to. There is a part of me that has always wanted to see what might be waiting beyond the familiar.
But even I have things I struggle to release.
Which brings me to something I wasn't sure I wanted to write about.
Rooted Vines.
Even as I'm writing this conversation, I'm asking myself some difficult questions about the very thing you're reading this on.
Four years, Four years of building, Creating teas, Designing, writing, events, classes, websites, content and money, so much money.
And an amount of work that would probably make me tired all over again if I actually added up the hours.
Yet the sales have remained painfully small.
One or two orders in some months.
And I've reached a place where I have to be willing to ask the same question I'm asking you:
Does this still fit?
I don't know yet, I really don't.
Maybe Rooted Vines needs another season.
Maybe something needs to change.
Maybe this final push will show me something I haven't been able to see.
Or maybe, at the end of this year, I'll realize that I've carried this particular version of the dream as far as it was meant to go.
That's difficult for me to write.
Because when you've invested years into something, walking away can feel like admitting those years were wasted.
But were they?
I'm beginning to think that's the wrong question.
Maybe everything isn't meant to last forever to have mattered.
That relationship mattered.
My years in the Emergency Department mattered.
Old friendships mattered the places I lived and the versions of my faith all mattered.
The woman I was at seventeen mattered, all of these things carried me somewhere, taught me something and they all introduced me to pieces of myself I might never have discovered otherwise.
And maybe part of growing is learning how to say:
Thank you for bringing me this far.
I don't know if you're meant to take me any farther.
I'm still learning how to discern the difference between giving up and knowing when something is complete.
That's where I am right now.
I don't have a pretty answer for you from the other side.
I'm standing in the doorway too.
But I do know something I didn't know when I was younger.
Staying has a cost.
I have paid for staying too long with time, opportunities, peace and with pieces of my sanity.
I've also lived long enough to know what can happen when we finally create room.
Leaving one life eventually opened the door to another.
It gave me peace. It changed the way I lived.
It brought me experiences I couldn't have imagined while I was still trying to make the old life work.
It eventually brought me the man who became my husband and changed the trajectory of my life.
I couldn't see any of that from where I was standing.
All I could see was what I might lose.
I had no idea what the empty space could eventually hold.
Maybe that's why I leave empty hangers in my closet now.
I've learned not to be frightened by a little space.
Space isn't always evidence that something is missing.
Sometimes...
it's evidence that you're finally ready to receive.
I think that's the part we sometimes misunderstand about making room.
We imagine it as loss.
An empty chair. An empty closet. An empty calendar. An empty space where a person, job, tradition, or dream used to be.
But empty doesn't always mean lonely.
Sometimes empty means available.
And there is a difference.
We Want Growth Without the Growing Pains
I've noticed something about us. We love the language of growth.
New seasons, new beginnings, and next chapters as well as expansion and purpose.
We write those words in journals. We pray about them. We put them on vision boards.
But we don't always talk about what growth actually requires.
Growth can be terribly inconvenient.
It rearranges things.
Sometimes it changes your circle, it changes what you enjoy, the conversations that once entertained you begin to exhaust you.
Sometimes the place you've always called home starts feeling too small.
and then you look up and, you realize the job you're good at is no longer the work you want to spend your life doing.
And sometimes you sit in a room filled with people you genuinely care about and quietly realize...
I don't belong here in the same way anymore.
Nothing dramatic happened, no betrayal. You haven't become better than anyone.
You've changed, and that's allowed.
I think women especially struggle with this because we are taught to preserve things.
Keep the family together, Maintain the friendships, Continue the traditions.
Remember everyone's birthdays, Show up, stay connected, so we don't disappoint anyone or become too different.
So when growth begins pulling us toward something unfamiliar, we can feel almost disloyal.
But what if changing doesn't mean you are rejecting who you were?
What if you're simply making room for who you're becoming?
I think about plants.
You can love a plant dearly and still recognize that the pot has become too small.
The pot isn't bad, It held the roots, and protected them.
It gave the plant somewhere to begin.
But eventually the very container that once supported its growth can restrict it.
And nobody gets angry with the plant for needing more room.
We don't stand over it saying,
"After everything that pot has done for you..."
We move it, We give the roots space, add fresh soil, water it.
Then we wait. Yet we can be unbelievably hard on ourselves when our own lives need repotting.
We call ourselves ungrateful, restless, difficult and confused.
We wonder why we can't just be satisfied.
And yes, there are times when we need to learn contentment. Every uncomfortable feeling isn't a divine instruction to pack a suitcase.
But there are also times when discomfort is information.
Something is changing. Something is pressing against the edges. Something needs room.
The wisdom is learning the difference.
When Staying Looks More Faithful Than Leaving
I've thought about this a lot when it comes to faith.
There are traditions that have been passed through families for generations.
Things nobody questions because questioning them feels almost like questioning God Himself.
But God isn't frightened by our questions.
I had to learn that.
There were things I accepted when I was younger because someone older told me they were true. There were things I saw in church that I assumed represented God simply because they happened inside a church building.
Life complicated that for me.
Pain complicated it.
Experience complicated it.
And strangely enough, those complications didn't take me farther away from God.
They made me seek Him for myself.
I stopped being satisfied with knowing what someone else said about Him.
I needed to know:
Who have I actually encountered?
The God I encountered in grief was different from the God people sometimes used to frighten me into obedience.
The God I encountered when I couldn't pray wasn't standing over me demanding better words.
He stayed.
The God I encountered when my life fell apart wasn't interested in appearances.
He met me in the wreckage.
So yes, I've questioned religion.
I've questioned traditions.
I've questioned interpretations.
I've questioned things I once thought I wasn't allowed to question.
And somehow, through all of that questioning, my relationship with God became more personal.
I stopped chasing someone else's understanding of Him.
I started allowing myself to encounter Him.
There's that word again.
Allowing.
I Stopped Chasing
When I answered the questions for this conversation, I wrote something without thinking very much about it:
I knew I had outgrown my old life when I stopped chasing and started allowing.
I've been thinking about that sentence ever since.
Because I spent a lot of years chasing.
Chasing relationships, understandings, validations, answers, the future and the people who weren't running toward me.
Chasing outcomes because I had already decided what my life was supposed to look like.
There is something exhausting about constantly trying to convince life to become what you've decided it should be.
Allowing feels different.
Allowing doesn't mean sitting around waiting for something magical to happen.
It means paying attention, noticing when something opens without having to be forced when something repeatedly closes.
It means doing your part without trying to control everybody else's.
It means being willing to say:
"Maybe there's another way."
I think that's part of what age has given me.
I'm less willing to be complacent.
But I'm also less willing to chase.
Those two things might sound contradictory, but they aren't.
I will move, work, take risk, try something new and walk through an open door.
What I'm becoming less willing to do is stand outside a locked one for years, pounding until my hands hurt, trying to convince myself persistence and purpose are always the same thing.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't.
And discernment lives somewhere in that difference.
Maybe that's why I'm not frightened to tell you that I don't know what will happen with Rooted Vines.
A younger version of me might have been embarrassed to admit that.
She might have thought uncertainty meant failure.
She might have worked twice as hard just so nobody would suspect she was questioning anything.
Today, I see it differently.
I can love something and question whether it still belongs in my next season.
I can be proud of what I've built and still examine whether it is sustainable.
I can believe God gave me something for a season without assuming I know how long that season is supposed to last.
And I can also decide to keep going.
That's important too.
Making room doesn't always mean leaving.
Sometimes examination leads you right back to what you already have, except now you're choosing it consciously instead of staying automatically.
Maybe I'll reach the end of this year and realize Rooted Vines needs to continue.
Maybe I'll discover a completely different way of doing it.
Maybe the business isn't finished at all, maybe the version of it I've been carrying is.
Or maybe I'll close the door with gratitude and walk toward something I cannot see yet.
I genuinely don't know, but I'm willing to know.
And perhaps that's where growth begins. Not with having the courage to leave.
With having the courage to tell yourself the truth.
The next time I clean my closet, I'll probably do what I always do.
I'll pull everything out.
I'll hold up things I haven't worn in a year and somehow convince myself for thirty seconds that this year will be different.
I'll laugh at a few questionable purchases.
I'll keep something sentimental that makes absolutely no practical sense.
I'm human, but eventually I'll make the piles.
Keep, give away, maybe. I already know which pile will give me the most trouble the maybe pile.
Maybe is where we put the things we're afraid to choose about. Maybe I'll need it,
maybe they'll change, maybe this job will get better, maybe I'll want this life again.
maybe I shouldn't disappoint them, maybe after everything I've invested, I have to keep going.
Maybe.
Sometimes maybe is wisdom. We don't have to make every decision immediately.
But sometimes maybe becomes storage.
A place where we keep decisions we've already made in our hearts because we're afraid to admit them out loud.
I think I'm learning to recognize the difference.
And maybe you are too. So I won't ask you to throw your whole life away after reading one blog.
Please don't. 😂
I'm only asking you to look around at what you're carrying at what you've inherited.
Look at what you've outgrown. Look at what still gives life.
And look at what you're keeping simply because it has always been there.
Then ask yourself one honest question:
If I make room, what might finally have space to enter?
You don't have to know the answer.
Neither do I.
For now, maybe it's enough to leave a few hangers empty.
After all this talk about closets, relationships, beliefs, businesses, and the things we may or may not be ready to release, I think we need some tea.
So come back to the table for a minute.
We don't have to decide anything today.
The kettle is already on.
Tea at Today's Table
Today's pot is Moroccan Mint.
And somehow, that feels right.
There's something about mint that feels fresh before you've even tasted it. You crush a leaf between your fingers and immediately know it's there. Bright. Clean. Awake.
That's what I want at this table today.
Not an answer.
A little clarity.
Because after we start examining our lives, it can be tempting to believe we need to make some enormous decision immediately.
Quit the job, end the friendship, move across the country, clean out the entire house or throw away half of your closet.
Please don't make a life-altering decision because Mayah told you to drink some mint tea and clean out a drawer. 😂
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm asking you to become curious about your own life.
Sit with it, taste it, notice it.
Ask yourself whether the things surrounding you still belong to the woman sitting at the table today.
Because sometimes we already know.
We just haven't gotten quiet enough to admit it.
And sometimes, we truly don't know yet.
That's okay too. There is wisdom in waiting when waiting is intentional.
There is also wisdom in moving when the answer has become clear.
The work is learning which one this season is asking of you.
So pour your tea. We're not rushing.
Return Practice
This week, I want you to choose one thing.
Not your entire life.
One area, Your closet, calendar, career. It might be a friendship, tradition, belief, routine or even a commitment.
A dream you've been carrying for so long you can't remember whether you still want it.
Then sit somewhere quiet with your tea and ask yourself:
Does this still fit me? Does this still serve the life I'm building?
Am I choosing this, or have I simply never chosen to leave it?
And then... stop.
Don't immediately start planning. Don't call anybody or make an annoucement.
Don't your dare turn your reflection into another project.
Just listen. You may realize you still love what you have.
Beautiful. Choose it again.
Maybe you discover something doesn't need to end; it simply needs to change.
Beautiful. Change it.
And perhaps you'll finally admit that something has been finished for a very long time.
That's okay too.
You don't have to know what will replace it before acknowledging that it no longer fits.
That's the part I wish more of us understood.
You are allowed to create space before you know exactly what will fill it.
You Don't Have to Hate the Old Life
I think this may be the part I understand differently now.
For years, I thought leaving required a villain.
Someone had to be wrong.
Something had to be terrible.
The old place needed to become unbearable before I could justify wanting something different.
Age has softened that thinking.
Sometimes a season can be good...
and complete.
A friendship can have been real...
and no longer fit.
A career can have given you twenty beautiful years...
and still be finished.
A dream can have carried you somewhere important...
and eventually ask to be released.
A belief can have helped you understand God at one point in your life...
and later need deeper examination.
You don't have to rewrite the past to move toward the future.
That's important.
I don't need to hate the woman I used to be.
I don't need to be embarrassed by what she wanted.
She made choices with the information she had.
She loved who she loved.
She believed what she believed.
She stayed when she thought staying was right.
She chased when she didn't yet understand that some things don't need to be chased.
I'm grateful for her.
But I don't owe every former version of myself permanent residence in my life.
Neither do you.
What Are You Taking With You?
Maybe that's the question.
If this season really is changing...
what deserves to come with you?
I want my faith.
But I want the faith I've wrestled with, questioned, experienced and chosen—not simply everything I inherited without examination.
I want the wisdom people have given me.
But I don't need every opinion.
I want memories.
I don't need to live inside them.
I want relationships that can stretch as I grow.
I want work that has meaning.
I want curiosity, laughter, love, peace,
And I want enough empty space for God to surprise me.
That last one has taken me a long time.
Because I used to arrive at God with the entire plan.
Here is the person, the outcome, the timeline, and here is what I need you to do.
Please sign at the bottom.
Life has truly humbled me.
Now I'm learning to come with open hands more often.
"This is what I hope for, God."
"But I'm listening."
That's where chasing begins turning into allowing.
From My Journal
I don't know what my next season looks like.
There, I said it.
And strangely, that sentence doesn't frighten me the way it once would have.
There are things I know.
I know I don't want to live complacently.
I know peace has become too valuable to trade for familiarity.
I know I don't want to spend another decade trying to convince something to become what it has repeatedly shown me it isn't.
I know I'm willing to ask questions.
I know I'm willing to change.
And I know I want enough room in my life to receive something I haven't imagined yet.
Rooted Vines may be part of that future.
I hope it is.
Maybe the work we're doing right here at this table is part of what it was always supposed to become.
Maybe there are changes I still can't see.
Maybe this next push will open a door.
And maybe I'll discover that the door leads somewhere else entirely.
I don't know.
But I don't think faith always means knowing.
Sometimes faith looks like standing at the threshold without running backward simply because the room behind you is familiar.
So I'm going to keep listening.
Keep working, Keep paying attention.
And when the time comes to choose, I hope I'll have enough courage to tell myself the truth.
Whatever that truth happens to be.
Reflection Questions
Don't answer these the way you think you should.
Answer them honestly.
• What part of my life have I quietly outgrown?
• What am I keeping simply because of the time, money, love, or history I've already invested in it?
• Where am I waiting for something to become terrible before giving myself permission to change?
• What belief, tradition, or expectation have I never examined for myself?
• What would I choose today if I weren't afraid of disappointing anyone?
• Where am I chasing something that may be asking me to stop forcing it?
• What deserves to come with me into my next season?
• Where could I intentionally leave a little empty space for something I cannot see yet?
Take a Moment for You
This reflection page was created to help you sit with what came up as you read. Pour yourself a cup of tea, find a quiet place, and give yourself permission to answer slowly. There are no perfect words here. just yours.
Download Your Reflection Journal Page Here
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