Spiral

Contradicting My Contradictions

I told myself I was making progress.

Then I found myself standing in the same place again.

Not the same circumstance.

Not the same season.

Just the same question wearing different clothes.

The same wound with a new name.

The same fear hiding behind a different door.

I keep expecting healing to arrive like a straight road. One mile marker after another. One lesson learned. One burden released. One horizon growing closer.

But my life has never moved like that.

It moves like weather trapped in a bottle.

Like rivers that double back on themselves.

Like a hawk circling something from so high above it looks motionless until you realize the entire sky is turning beneath it.

And maybe that's why I get frustrated.

Because I can see ten outcomes before breakfast and still lose my keys.

I can carry conversations that haven't happened yet.

I can relive ones that ended years ago.

I can hold grief and gratitude in the same hand and somehow drop both.

———

Some days I wake up with enough hope to rebuild entire cities.

By lunch, I'm questioning a decision I made three years ago.

By dinner, I'm thanking God for blessings I spent all afternoon overlooking.

Then somewhere around midnight, my mind opens every drawer in the house and starts laying old memories across the floor like evidence.

Not because it hates me.

Not because it wants me to suffer.

Because it cannot stop searching for meaning in things it never fully understood.

And I am tired of mistaking that search for failure.

———

I keep returning to places I thought I had already left.

Old conversations.

Old fears.

Old versions of myself.

I visit them so often that I start wondering if I've actually grown at all.

But the strange thing about a spiral is that it only looks like a circle when you're standing inside it.

From above, the distance becomes visible.

The movement becomes visible.

The climb becomes visible.

And maybe God sees from above more often than I do.

Maybe that's why He is less discouraged by my returning than I am.

Maybe He knows the difference between repetition and formation.

———

Lord, I confess that I want transformation to be immediate.

I want healing to move in straight lines.

I want wisdom without wandering.

I want peace without wrestling.

I want certainty without waiting.

But You keep growing gardens in places I would have paved over.

You keep calling things alive that I declared finished.

You keep returning me to lessons I thought I had already learned, not to shame me, but to deepen the roots.

And I don't always know how to thank You for that.

Sometimes it feels too much like starting over.

———

There are ghosts here.

Not the kind that haunt houses.

The kind that haunt expectations.

The version of me that thought success would finally quiet everything.

The version of me that believed understanding would erase struggle.

The version of me that imagined healing meant never feeling the weight again.

They still visit sometimes.

They still knock.

They still ask why the journey takes so long.

And if I'm honest, I still open the door more than I should.

———

Yet here I am.

Still praying.

Still writing.

Still showing up.

Still finding reasons to laugh on days that should have swallowed me whole.

Still discovering beauty in places that used to terrify me.

Still surprised by mercy.

Still interrupted by grace.

Still moving.

Not in a straight line.

But moving.

———

And perhaps that is the miracle I keep overlooking.

Not that the spiral disappeared.

Not that every question found an answer.

Not that every wound stopped aching.

But that through every turn, every return, every season I was certain would break me—

God was already waiting at the next curve.

Not asking why I came back.

Only reminding me that I wasn't where I used to be.

———

Because a circle brings you home to the same place.

A spiral brings you home to the same truth from a different height.

And maybe that is what growth has always been.

Not escape.

Elevation.

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