How do you know?
When it’s time to build? Time to tear down? Time to repair? Time to start over?
My own life feels like a series of tearing down and tearing down. Then building part of something.
Then tearing it down again.
(You always build it better the second time around)
Some things need to be destroyed in order for the world to be better. For your family to be better. For you to be better. But there is something so sacred about what you built that tearing it down feels like you are ripping your heart right out of your chest. Because you don’t build something that doesn’t matter to you. Good or bad.
You build it precisely because you believe it’s important. Necessary. Key to your life’s happiness. So to tear that down means more then just tear it down.
It means tearing yourself down.
Which means you have to build something else. Which was hard enough the first time, right? But when what you built must be torn down it means so much of what you thought to be good and true and right is no longer good and true and right. So you must rediscover what else is good.
And true. And right.
Then build from there. Hoping that each brick that you take from a memory or experience or a person will not be torn down next time because it’s like taking pieces of your heart and building something new.
Stephanie Nelson 
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