Old Clothes

What is in your closet? Purging feels like expunging, an erasing of what holds one in a pattern, like a trapped memory or old way of being. Clothing represents who we are and how we see ourselves. My closet was full of a vestige, an old way of being me. The adage, out with the old and in with the new begins on the inside and manifests and makes itself known on the outside, a transformative experience . Clearing away what no longer suits, what no longer serves helps make room for what does suit and serve. Of course, my closet is a metaphor for what is happening in my life. I am choosing what will stay, what will go, how I want to be in the world. Old patterns, old ways of thinking and being, they have fallen away and I am new. I have what I call a special box, a place where I have stored away momentos cards from family, friends, pictures and art from my son, whole journals and heaps of paper that I had recorded my thoughts and feelings on over the years. Stored memories, in a box, on a shelf in my closet. The box could take no more and I decided it was time to look inside, to keep and purge. I am a minimalist and so for me, whatever was in the box had enough significance to have made it there in the keep pile and for some items, they had been kept for a very long time, dating back to 1989. My life, in review, and as I write, I grin. I am who I am and have been since ever I was...in other words, I haven't changed much and the things people said to me in cards over the years, I still hear them today, marking me as consistent. What's different you ask? I now believe what I hear, I don't erase when I hear kind words or compassion or encouragement when they are directed toward me. I am not alone, I don't have to prove myself and I like who I am. I like who I am and self doubt is the vestige now, the old clothes I no longer agree to wear. I am, you are, created in Gods own image...how can we resist appreciating that, pray tell?