You can’t move forward while still holding on to what broke you. You can’t build something deep and meaningful, something rooted, on the same ground that taught you how to settle, how to shrink. Still, it is human to try. It is human to convince yourself that more effort will fix what keeps falling apart. It is human to believe that love can endure, that it can cheat misalignment. It is human to keep trying to heal a heart you did not break. You tell yourself that if you love harder, or if you pray more, or if you wait longer, love will anchor itself, love will stay. But some connections, some hopes, do not need more of your effort or belief — they need to be released. 

There will always come a point in life, in growth, where peace stops silencing itself, and it starts demanding to be chosen. A point where your soul grows restless in what once felt familiar. A point where the same space that used to ignite you and inspire you begins to feel too small, too heavy to hold. That is not failure, that is not something to ignore or to write off — it is direction. It is God showing you that what once held you gently, and in the most beautiful way, is now holding you back, is now asking you to trust the unknown. It is God’s grace disguised as discomfort, it is God’s guidance disguised as an ache, as letting go.

Because at the end of the day, you cannot build a future on anything that keeps you roped to the past. You cannot expect your new life to take root, to anchor, in an environment that was meant to carry you for a season, in an environment that is not equipped to sustain your growth. 

And yet, it is so incredibly easy to stay, it is so incredibly easy to settle, because leaving something you once prayed for with your whole heart can feel like self-betrayal. Because we often confuse fighting for something with loving it, we often confuse attachment and loyalty. Because we forget that God never asked us to endure, or to suffer, for what he already wrote out of our story, what he already encouraged us to release. When he asks you to let go, it isn’t to take from you, or to punish you — it is to return you to yourself.

Yes, it will hurt. Even when you know that it is the right thing to do, even when you trust in the story God is writing for you. It will hurt because endings are never just about other human beings; they are about who you were when you loved them, they are about the version of you who believed that this was it, that your heart could finally exhale. You will grieve not only what couldn’t stay, but you will also have to mourn the future you imagined within it. You will replay the memories, trying to find the one that could have rewritten the ending, the one that could have softened the hurt. 

But slowly, in time, you will come to see that the closure you are searching for was never meant to come from understanding — it was only ever meant to come from acceptance.

Letting go is an act of faith. It is trusting that God sees what you can’t. It is having faith in the belief that he is not punishing you with a quieter life, but rather, he is protecting you with it. You have to give yourself permission to stop reopening the doors that God already closed. You have to give yourself permission to trust that the right things will never require you to lose yourself in order to keep them, in order to be blessed by them. They will meet you where you are. They will expand with you. They will bring you closer to peace, not further from it.

This is the beginning, the becoming — not the ending. This is where you start again, not from a place of loss, but from a place of clarity, from a place of deep alignment. This is where you are being encouraged to have faith in the fact that sometimes loss is the only way God could lead you home. That grief and grace often share the same face. That the love you thought you so deeply wanted was never meant to eclipse the love that God was waiting to give you, the love that he had already written into your story.

You did not lose what was meant for you — you made room for what is still to come.

And room is always how God begins again. It is always how he does his best work.