2025: Your Outworn Contracts
Find out what yours are.
I was thinking of the new year, goals and desires and it occurred to me that we are always making little (or big) contracts with ourselves and others. They can be mental or spiritual. And it made me wonder…
IS IT TIME TO RE-ASSESS FIGURATIVE OR LITERAL CONTRACTS (AGREEMENTS) IN YOUR LIFE?
Friend, you could take this anywhere you want. But I’m betting the first thing that popped into your mind is where to start. Take a moment now. What pops up?
Let’s be clear. I’m not suggesting clicking the first paper shredder that appears on Amazon. I’m using the word - re-assess - for a reason. Here’s what the oxford dictionary says:
verb: re-assess
consider or assess again, especially while paying attention to new or different factors.
Example: “I have decided to reassess my contracts in life”
Review would be a useful word as well.
What agreements have you made with yourself, your work, your daily life, your health, your spiritual life that are over-cooked?
What’s being done because it’s just always been done that way? But clearly isn’t working anymore.
This really feels connected and on the same wave length as exploring what season you’re in as well. For example, if you are in a season of “a time to be born” (which may feel like new life on the horizon, or maybe you’re expecting new life whether literally or poetically), then the habits or connections you have that make you feel dragged back into old choices that don’t support “a time to be born” need to go or at the very least need to be re-written.
(It is also worth noting that often we choose a season for ourselves and then a few months later it is much more clear what season has been chosen for us. Pay attention.)
EXAMPLES: REWRITING FRIENDSHIP CONTRACTS… AND COPING WHEN YOU’RE ON THE RECEIVING END OF A BROKEN AGREEMENT
Sometimes in friendships you change so much or someone else changes so much or not at all - whatever the reason, you realize that things just can’t go on as they were if a new awareness or understanding doesn’t occur.
Maybe you have to sit down and review what friendship is to you and what needs to be changed. Maybe you used to carouse, drink, drug it up and your new season is a “time to build” (or re-build). Well anyone who has every walked that road will tell you that it’s very hard to associate with friends who continue in that line of addictive behavior while you’re trying to turn your life around.
This has happened to me though not by that example. I have had to allow space in friendships through time with people who’s spiritual growth was either non-existent or on trajectory that just didn’t align with where God was leading me. This has nothing to do with not loving that person or not being able to respect differences, but sometimes a choice must be made to love and respect from afar until paths can join up again on a more even level.
Sometimes a new friendship agreement has to be rewritten and some agreements need to be dissolved.
It’s hard and can be painful or even gut-wrenching. When you’re contemplating this, it helps to see it before you in a journal written out in your own hand. It clarifies the new life and helps you recognize when the old life is attempting to snare you like crabs in a bucket.1
ON THE FLIP SIDE: HOW TO RECEIVE A BROKEN AGREEMENT WITH GRACE
Sometimes you are on the receiving end of a re-written contract or agreement, whether work or daily life from the sublime to the mundane.
I was speaking with a spiritual “directee” the other day who was on the receiving end