I recently heard something in a podcast that made me stop and sit still for a while:
Whatever choice you make, your life will grow around it.

And I thought, ‘Heck yes!’
Yes. That’s it.

We talk about decision-making as if it’s a one-shot at the ‘right’ life. As if choosing wrong will end it all. As if one closed door means every other one disappears. But really, most choices, even the hard, loud, heart-heavy ones, are things we grow around.

Say you choose Husband X. Five years in, it hits you that maybe you should have chosen Y, and you mourn that a little. You sit in the ache of what could have been. And yet, your life continues. It adapts. A new dream forms. A different version of peace comes. Maybe you even leave Husband X and start over, and again, your life wraps around that choice too. Rebuilds. Blooms again, even if the soil is different. You could even choose to stay married to Husband X. \your life will grow around that decision, too.

It’s not just about husbands. It’s the degree you picked. The one you dropped. The cities you left and the ones you stayed too long in. The job you took out of fear. The friendship you didn’t fight for. The one you should have let go earlier. The child you had when you weren’t ready. The child you didn’t. The Sunday you slept through instead of showing up. The fight you escalated instead of pausing.

Whatever it is, your life didn’t end.
It grew. Twisted, maybe, but it grew.

I think of all the hours I’ve wasted in the prison of ‘what if.’ What if I had chosen that one? What if I had waited? What if I’d spoken, stayed, said yes, said no? And it’s valid to feel the weight of those things. Regret isn’t sin. But to stay there forever, flogging your own decisions, waiting for the perfect ones, that’s where joy goes to die.

Most days are made of a string of small choices; what to eat, how to speak, when to stop scrolling, how to use an hour… and some days come with the bigger ones. But either way, I’m learning to release the pressure. To choose the best I can with what I know now, and trust that my life, stubborn and soft and spirit-filled, will grow around it.

Because it always does.

Are you still being hard on yourself for a decision you made and can’t undo? Yes?
What would it mean to finally let it go? Answer that on your journal.

I’m about to wash my beautiful hair, take a loooooooonggg shower, get a sexy pedicure, and enjoy the hell out of this weekend. I hope you do. Enjoy the weekend.

Talk again, very soon, reader. Thanks for being here.

Yours, with love,

Njoks.

Also, the ‘Nitakumbuka’ song by Bekah Dawn is on repeat in this house of mine. I lover her, and the song, to bits! Which song have you been loving? Let me know in the comments section. You don’t have to journal this one, haha.