Last Thursday, something small happened that shouldn’t have rattled me.
But it did.
I sat down with my journal, the same journal I had been writing in every morning for months, and when I opened it, the last entry was from three weeks ago.
Three weeks.
I stared at that date like it was accusing me.
My first reaction was the familiar cocktail of shame and self-judgment:
“How did I fall off again?”
“I was doing so well.”
“Why can’t I stay consistent like everyone else?”
It felt like I had dropped the thread of my own life.
So I closed the journal and pushed it away.
I didn’t want to look at it.
I didn’t want to look at myself.
When the Ground Shifts
But later that afternoon, something strange happened.
I stepped outside to take the trash out (nothing spiritual, nothing ceremonial), and I noticed the first tiny green shoots pushing up through the soil near my walkway.
The kind you only see in early spring, when the ground is still cold but life is starting to stir underneath.
And I had this quiet realization.
“Oh.”
“I’m not broken.”
“I’m just in a winter.”
Not a failure.
Not a collapse of discipline.
Not proof that I can’t stick with anything.
Just a season.
A natural, predictable, cyclical season.
And that changed something for me.
The Story We Tell About the Lapse
Because a lot of the pain we feel after falling off a practice does not come from the lapse itself.
It comes from the story we tell about the lapse.
You miss a few days of journaling.
A week of meditation.
A stretch of reading, prayer, reflection, or whatever helps you feel like yourself.
And pretty soon your mind starts building a case against you.
Maybe I’m inconsistent.
Maybe I’m lazy.
Maybe I always do this.
To be clear, that story feels true when you’re in it.
But that does not make it true.
What If the Quiet Season Was Part of the Pattern?
The better question is this:
What if the quiet season was part of the pattern?
What if your inner life works more like the earth than a productivity app?
Winter is not a failure of spring.
Winter is what comes before spring.
The earth does not panic because nothing is blooming in January.
It pulls inward.
It stores energy.
It gets ready.
And then, when the time is right, life returns.
I think the same thing happens to us.
Sometimes a lapse is not a sign that you’ve lost the path.
Sometimes it means you are in a quieter part of it.
That does not mean you stay there forever.
It means you stop making the season mean something cruel about who you are.
The Return Means More Than the Streak
So if you have fallen off lately (your journal, your prayers, your study, your stillness), maybe this is your reminder:
You do not need to come back with drama.
You do not need a grand plan.
You do not need to punish yourself first.
You may just need to recognize the season you are in and let that recognition soften the shame.
Because when spring comes (and it does), you will not be starting from nothing.
You will be returning.
And sometimes the return means more than the streak ever did.
Get the free Anxiety Alchemy Starter Kit and start mastering your inner world: https://mikeguarneri.com/starter-lp-blog