Three Truths I'm Learning About Living Fully
There are moments in life when clarity arrives quietly, like dawn breaking across the horizon. These insights don't scream their arrival —they simply settle into your awareness, shifting your perspective on everything that follows. Here are three truths I've been discovering about what it means to live with an open heart.
Fear is the Thief of Love & Joy
Fear has a convincing disguise. It almost always arrives wearing the mask of wisdom, promising to protect me from this world of disappointment. It whispers reasonable things: Be careful. Don't get your hopes up. Remember what happened last time.
But I'm learning that what fear actually guards against is life itself—the beautiful, sometimes messy experience of being alive. When I let fear make my choices, I trade the possibility of deep connection for the guarantee of shallow safety. I choose the predictable over the transformative, the known over the wondrous.
When I live from joy and love instead, something shifts. There is beauty in the challenges, growth in the stagnancy, peace in the mundane. Fear promises protection but delivers isolation. Love promises nothing but vulnerability—and somehow delivers everything.
Presence Creates the Best Memories
The most beautiful moments catch me by surprise—not because I planned them, but because I was present enough to receive them. I used to think that meaningful experiences required careful orchestration, perfect timing, and ideal circumstances.
Now I understand differently. When I stop trying to direct my life like a movie and instead show up fully to what's actually here, ordinary moments reveal their hidden sweetness. The way afternoon light falls across a kitchen table. A spontaneous laugh shared with a stranger—the quiet satisfaction of completing a simple task with attention.
It's in this kind of presence that I feel closest to God, watching life unfold with the patience of a flower opening to the sun. The sacred isn't somewhere else, waiting for me to find it. It's here, in this breath, this moment, this perfectly imperfect now.
Surrender is its own Freedom
For so long, I believed that letting go meant giving up. That surrender was a form of defeat, a white flag raised in the face of life's challenges.
But when I stop forcing, trying to figure everything out, and start trusting, I find something unexpected: peace. Surrender isn't giving up—it's making space for God, for love, and for joy to flow in. It's the recognition that my tight-fisted attempts to control outcomes often block the very things I'm trying to create.
Surrender is the lightness you feel as you float with your face above the water. It is the air that lifts your hair. It is the knowing that all things are working out just as they should—not necessarily as I planned, but as they are supposed to.
Living the Questions
These aren't life’s final answers; they are ongoing discoveries. Each day offers new opportunities to choose love over fear, presence over distraction, surrender over control. Some days I remember. Some days I forget. Both are part of the journey.
I'm learning the goal isn't perfection but awareness—the gentle practice of returning, again and again, to what matters most. To the love that's always available. To the moment that's always here. To the trust that carries us forward, even when we can't see the way.
What truths are you discovering about living fully? I'd love to hear your reflections.
Love, Charlene