Something about this building caught my eye today and I decided to wanted to get this shot. I don’t know about you but I sometimes find myself imagining the circumstances that led to the way things are and I really wonder what happened to this place. There could be a myriad of reasons for its closure but this represented someone and their dream that is, for now, over.
I know this may seem odd but, as I contemplated the photo, I started wondering how the building itself may feel. I promise I haven’t lost my mind (well, completely anyway) and am going somewhere with this so stay with me. But, if it could talk, I wonder what that building would say? Would it be wondering why the owners didn’t come back to fix it up? Could it think that there was something wrong with it that caused the business to fail? Maybe, if it could, would it be even thinking if it’s safer behind that fence with the barbed wire and the chain across its driveway with the bright, red-lettered “closed” sign.
This reminded me of all the times in my life where things didn’t exactly go the way I expected, or would have liked, and I looked like this building. I didn’t look very good, didn’t appear to have much of a future, and was content to be alone within my own barbed wire fence with chains and a “closed” sign. It seemed like the safest place to be until I came to accept that failure isn’t final until I quit; that I had the ability to choose how I reacted to the failures, disappointments, and hurts of life and use them to propel rather than torpedo me.
Unlike this building, we can choose to change in significant ways and
radically renovate our lives by changing our way of thinking, speaking, and behaving. We can literally move from a prison of our own making to a panorama of possibility when we choose to believe what’s really true about ourselves rather than the lies that our world tends to scream at us. We are more than the sum of our accomplishments, possessions, finances, or social media following.
We are more beloved than we could ever imagine and have access to greater things than we realize if we’d only choose to believe and take possession of what has already been provided us. We can’t always change on our own but we have someone in our lives who is ready to help if we’d let go of our pride and ask. Renovation takes time and can be messy but that only means we’ll be better than what we were and ready for a far better future.
