When the Shoes Don't Fit

Give them Away

Yesterday, my youngest daughter Penny fell as she was leaving her mom’s house. She was wearing boots that are a little too big for her and she tripped and fell as she was running toward me. She scraped her knee and even her right side by her ribs. She cried as I comforted her, and eventually once we got home and after Jackie helped me put some antibiotic ointment and band-aids on her cuts, did she finally calm down.

Later tonight, as I was reflecting on what happened, I thought about how often we find ourselves in situations that just don’t fit, like Penny’s boots. Whether it’s a career or a relationship, we think we can push through, but it isn’t until we take the shoes home and live in them for a time that we realize that something’s not quite right. We may even make a few adjustments, like get new shoelaces and memory foam insoles, as a last ditch effort to convince ourselves that the shoes fit.

The truth is though, that a part of us knows when those things don’t fit, but we just try to go ahead and run in those loose shoes anyway. We think that if we soldier on, our willpower will be enough to overcome those misgivings. Once the inevitable happens, we feel defeated because we should have known better.

I’m not saying that we will always get it right, but the hope is that we will learn to trust ourselves, to trust that still voice inside of us more readily. We will still fall, but hopefully the bruises will be less painful.

You don’t have to keep the shoes that don’t fit. Give them away.

Thanks for reading.

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