"Silent Voices of the Soul"- Book Excerpt

Letting Go


I couldn’t wait to remove the rug from the staircase. It was worn and dirty; I didn’t like looking at it. I wanted to tear it off fast and carry it to the road. My chore held symbolic significance. An old rug didn’t belong in the new life I was in the process of creating. Footprints reminded me of the past. I had allowed others to “walk” all over me.

John helped me get the project started. He ripped the rug away from the bottom step. Together, we lifted it up and pulled it off the staircase a little at a time. The rug was heavy and cumbersome. More than once I had to put it down. I had to give my arms a rest before I could pick it up again.

Eventually, we dragged the rug out of the house and left it by the road.

I thought my job was done. But when we went back inside to admire the “new” stairs, John pointed something out to me. Hundreds of staples had been left behind. They blended in with the woodwork so I didn’t see them at first. He demonstrated how to remove them.

I had to be patient with the process. I could only work on one staple at a time. First, I lifted it with a screwdriver. Then I removed it with a pair of pliers. Sometimes a staple would come out easily. Sometimes it would break while I was trying to release it. Sometimes it was so firmly imbedded in the wood that I had to take it out with a special tool.

There were no shortcuts. There was no way to expedite the transformation. If I tried to speed things up, something would happen to slow me down. Spirit reminded me to take my time.

When I removed a staple in one step instead of two, I ended up gouging the wood. When I attempted to pull one out with my fingers, I stabbed myself. When I tried to move forward too quickly, I tripped.

The process was slow. It took nearly a week to finish the project. Patience, energy and time were required to make it happen. Whenever I removed a staple from the staircase, I acknowledged my progress. I celebrated my success. To me, each staple represented something from my past that had held me in place: an unhealthy thought, a negative perception, a limited way of looking at life… I had let go of many things that no longer served me.

My work had been completed. I walked up the stairs, silently congratulating myself on a job well done. The old rug was gone, so were the staples that had held it down. Light was shining on the staircase; there were no footprints to see.

I was on my way to the second floor, when my sock caught itself on a staple.
“Not so fast, Spirit whispered, not so fast.”