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I have always known that I am an organised person. At home and at work, I naturally like things to be arranged and in order. About ten years ago, when I moved into my new home, the minimalist side of me became more visible too. I began appreciating having less, keeping only what truly mattered and creating more space around me.
What I did not realise was that there was another kind of decluttering I needed, and it had nothing to do with the things around me.
Last year, something unexpected happened during an unofficial coaching session with a wonderful friend who later relocated to Australia. We were simply sharing, listening and practising what we had learned from a course we attended together. There was no expectation that anything significant would come from it.
During the session, I was guided to picture the painful memories I had carried for years. With my eyes closed, I imagined gathering them into a star-shaped stone and, with all my strength, throwing it into a river.
What happened in my mind surprised me. The stone did not disappear. Instead, it became an ordinary stone resting peacefully beneath the clear water, just like all the other stones already there. Somehow, it no longer felt like something I had to hold onto. It could remain part of the river, just as those memories could remain part of my past.
For many years, I had carried words spoken to me since childhood that affected the way I saw myself. They made me question my worth, my abilities and whether I was capable of achieving anything meaningful. When certain words are repeated often enough, especially when we are young, we can begin to accept them before we even realise what they are doing to us. Only then did I begin to understand how deeply some of those words had shaped the way I viewed myself.
In that quiet moment by the river, I felt something release. The heaviness seemed lighter, and the tension I had been carrying in my chest and shoulders slowly disappeared. For the first time, I felt free from something I had not even realised was still holding me back.
It felt as though God was gently telling me, “It is time.” Not because the past had not happened or because the pain did not matter, but because I think I was finally ready to stop carrying it in the same way.
Only after letting go did I understand how heavy that small stone had really been. It held years of memories, words and beliefs about myself, and those beliefs had quietly affected my confidence and what I thought I was capable of.
Later that same day, something else happened that still stays with me. For more than five years, I had been trying to understand certain financial concepts. I had read about them, studied them and tried repeatedly, but some of the basic ideas never seemed to connect in my mind.
That evening, while looking at a financial term, something suddenly clicked. I understood it.
I remember how surprised I was. Something I had struggled with for years suddenly seemed clear, and when I told my son what had happened, even he was amazed. I cannot say with certainty that one thing caused the other, but the timing stayed with me.
It made me wonder how much of what I once thought I could not understand or could not do had been influenced by beliefs I had carried for years. Somewhere inside me, perhaps I had accepted too easily that certain things were beyond me.
The stone did not vanish from the river, and neither did my past. I do not need it to. Those experiences happened and they will always belong to my story. What changed was my need to keep carrying them.
For years, I thought some of those painful memories were important because they explained who I was and what I had survived. Letting go did not make them less real. It simply meant they no longer needed to remain at the centre of how I saw myself.
That, to me, is where God's grace appeared most quietly. The past could stay where it belonged, and I could finally keep walking without carrying all of it with me.