everything grows towards the light

Today I was talking to someone very dear to my heart about making “bad” choices. I use “bad” loosely because I don’t like the word, I feel that it encourages shame. But for the sake of this post, I am going to use it. After I hung up the phone, I found myself making a mental list of all the bad choices I’ve made in my almost 23 years on planet earth. I was just getting to the bad choices of my 18^th year when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on my wall. This mirror is a really cheap plastic framed one that the last tenants left in my room, one I really only ever use it to make sure that my shoes go with the rest of my outfit. So you could say that up until today it was the least important of all of my mirrors. But today as I looked into the eyes staring back at me, all I saw was a blonde haired, hazel-eyed young woman wearing old running shorts and a t-shirt that badly needed to be made into a rag. I didn’t see any of my past choices or the people that may have judged me too harshly or even the hammer that I keep in my own head to come down on myself in guilt and shame. All I saw was the same face, eyes, and knobby elbows and knees that have been there all along.  And It dawned on me, not only am I the me I have always been regardless of the places I’ve passed along the way, but I think that I am a better version of that self because of what I’ve been through.

I began to wonder how many other people this is true for. How many more screw ups are there out there who look at all the different paths they have taken and come to the same realization, that those things have only made them a better version of themselves. You see, I have come to believe more and more in this idea that everything grows towards the light, including people. Some may argue that you are only growing towards the light if you are a good person right then, not ________(fill in the blank with a "bad" thing). But I am not sure if I would agree with that. I think that in every moment we are growing towards the light. Even the murderers imprisoned for life. And that is God’s great plan. No matter how hard we think we’re screwing things up, and no matter how evil other people may think that we are or how evil we may think that others are, we are all still growing towards the light in a way that is unique to us.