YOU'RE NOT IN STAGNANT WATERS, YOU MOVED FORWARD

You are not who you were last week.
You have already grown since then.
You may not feel like it when you look at your surroundings, but if you take a moment to think about it, you will find that you have learned something that you did not know a week ago. Think about the news headlines you have read since last Wednesday. Think about the conversations you had. The photographs you took. The things you posted on social media or sent in an email. And if you have a hard time remembering, take a moment to scroll through your phone or flip through your calendar or journal to be reminded. The things that have happened since last week may not have been life-altering, but they have definitely shaped you in some way.
In many ways, we are like sponges, constantly taking things in. But the problem is, we often don’t realize what we’re taking in until weeks, months, and years later. We don’t always realize that a conversation we had with someone had more impact on us than we initially realized, and we would remember their words for years to come. We don’t always see that a tough moment at work or a change of plans made us just a little bit stronger.
Think about what it feels like to look back on photographs from a great season of your life.
Maybe it was summer 1996.
Your first semester of college.
Last New Year's Eve.
While you were in the moment, you had no idea those would be some of your favorite moments. You had no idea those people would become some of your best friends. You had no need to think about how this moment would never happen again.
This past week of your life may or may not have been filled with life-altering events, but moments still happened that will never happen again, and now, they are a part of your story. You may not be able to reflect on everything that happened over the past week right now, and that’s okay, because you can still choose to believe that your time was not wasted. You were not in stagnant waters. You still moved forward. You still grew in ways that you might not be able to see yet. Even through the difficult things, you survived. You made it. This is growth. This is progress. And it is worth being grateful for.

More in this week's series called "Even Here, You Are Free to Feel What You Need To Feel", only with a subscription in the Storyteller App.

Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols
@thestorytellerco
@morganharpernichols