There was a time when I believed my life would finally begin once I reached the castle.
The castle was the perfect relationship.
The financial breakthrough
The Career.
The Home.
Everything I wanted seemed to exist somewhere just over the horizon.
So chased.
I believed if I could just arrive there, the emptiness I carried would disappear.
but While I was chasing the castle, I stopped tending the garden.
The garden was my health.
My creativity.
My friendships.
My relationship with God.
My peace.
The strange thing about gardens is that they don't stop growing because we don't love them. They stop growing because we stop watering them.
When all of our attention is fixed on a distant destination, the life we've already been given quietly begins to wither.
Recovery has taught me something I wish I had understood years ago.
The goal isn't to abandon dreams.
The goal is to stop believing that happiness lives somewhere else.
A healthy garden has a way of attracting beautiful things on its own.
Not because it is trying to impress anyone.
But because life naturally growns where it is cared for.
Today, when I find myself becoming consumed by one problem, one unanswered question, or one future hope, I ask myself a different question:
"What part of my garden needs my attention today?"
Sometimes it's writing.
Sometimes its making amends.
Sometimes its rest.
Sometimes it's simply showing up for another day of recovery.
The castle may or may not come.
But If I spend my life tending the garden, I won't arrive there having forgotten how to live.
