As I reflect on this past year, I notice how often and how hard I work in an attempt to hold everything together. Falling apart never feels like an option. There’s too much to do. Too many appointments, deadlines, and responsibilities calling. Even sitting down for meditation can feel like a tug-of-war, a part of me pulled back toward the next thing on the list, whispering, don’t sit here too long.

Lately, my reflections have circled around change - the change in seasons, and the changes in me. The place in the garden where I sat all summer to catch the first morning light is now covered in hard shadow well into the day. My body is changing in these middle years. And our son is changing, too. Growing and stretching in all the ways adolescence demands. Change, as they say, is the only constant.

But of course, it’s never just about the seasons or the shifting light or the temporary moods. What I’m really noticing is how I am being changed by all of it. Not just the passage of time, but how that passage shapes who I’m becoming.

Sometimes I worry that I’ve grown more controlling, more guarded, more judgmental…a little hardened by this life. And it leaves me wondering: what would it feel like to soften a little more? to trust life? to celebrate more freely? to fall apart when it’s time…and then simply be?

In our Yoga class this week, we explored the quiet strength and resilience required to open our hearts again and again. After the loss, after the grief, after betrayal, resentment, disappointment, impatience - all the difficult things life will undoubtedly place before us.

Again and again.

And with time and practice, maybe we can keep our hearts open a little longer each time.

This morning, in the soft December light, I sat with a poem by Mark Nepo, The Lesson. He writes about being broken open by life - through heartbreak, illness, love lost - and the deep tenderness of being human. He ends with these lines:

Each time I tried to close
what had been opened.
It was reflex, natural enough.
But the lesson was, of course,
the other way—
in never closing again.

So today, I’m sitting with that lesson.

What if, instead of closing after life’s betrayals…instead of trying to put everything back where it “should” be…
I let myself remain open?

Open to change.
Open to being changed.
Open to trust, to tenderness, to mystery.
Open to being blessed by all that is holy.

As you move through your own season of life:

What is opening in you right now—
and what might become possible if you didn’t close it back up?

The Lesson

When young, it was the first fall from love.

It broke me open the way lightning splits a tree.

Then, years later, cancer broke me further.

This time, it broke me wider the way a flood

carves the banks of a narrow stream.

Then, having to leave a twenty-year marriage.

This broke me the way wind shatters glass.

Then, in Africa, it was the anonymous face

of a schoolboy beginning his life.

This broke me yet again. But this

was like hot water melting soap.

Each time I tried to close

what had been opened.

It was a reflex, natural enough.

But the lesson was, of course, the other way —

in never closing again.

-Mark Nepo

Thanks for being here on the journey.

I’d love to hear from you! Please reply to this email with your comments or suggestions.

If you know someone who would value this newsletter, feel free to share it with them.

If you’ve been forwarded this email, and would like to receive more Breakthrough Bits, subscribe here.

Visit my website