Back in 2012 I wrote a blog about “Don’t cut what you can untie.”

At first, I took it literally. Don’t cut the pretty ribbon from a package when you can patiently untie it and save it for another day. At the time, I was reading Seven Thousand Ways to Listen by Mark Nepo. He wrote about fishermen who had to sit down at the end of each day and patiently untangle their nets. Knot by knot. Tangle by tangle.

I began to wonder how many things in my own life I had cut simply because I did not have the patience to untie them.

Now, all these years later, those words mean even more to me.

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Life has given me plenty of knots since then. Relationships that became estranged, plans that did not turn out the way I hoped, grief that could not be hurried, and seasons when I wanted an answer but God asked me to wait. My first instinct has often been to reach for the scissors. Make a clean cut. Be done with the hurt, the confusion or the struggle.

But age has taught me that a clean cut is not always the same thing as healing.

Untying is slower. It asks us to sit with what is tangled and look closely at it. It requires patience, prayer and sometimes the humility to admit that we may have pulled a knot tighter while trying to free ourselves from it.

These days, I understand that untying does not always mean restoring everything to the way it once was. Some relationships need distance. Some doors need to remain closed. Some things cannot be repaired by our hands alone. But even then, we can gently untie the anger, resentment and sorrow from our own hearts. We can loosen our grip and place what we cannot fix into God’s hands.

I see this lesson everywhere in my life now.

I see it at my pottery table, where clay cannot be rushed or forced without showing the damage. I see it with my horses, who respond far better to patience and trust than pressure. I see it in the people I love, each of us carrying knots the others may not fully understand. And I see it in myself, still learning that I do not have to solve every hard thing in a single day.

The world encourages us to cut quickly. Cut people off, cut our losses, cut away anything uncomfortable. Sometimes that is necessary for our safety or peace. But sometimes what looks hopelessly tangled simply needs time, tenderness and a little grace.

I am still not the most patient person. I still want to get things done and find the quickest way through. But I no longer want to hack my way through life just to reach the end. There is too much I would miss: the quiet work of forgiveness, the lesson hidden inside a hard season, the beauty of beginning again, and the blessing that only becomes visible when I slow down long enough to notice it.

God has been patient with every knot in me. He has never hurried my healing or discarded me because I became difficult to untangle. He continues to work gently, faithfully and patiently, one knot at a time.

So I am trying to offer that same grace to the people I love, to the life I have been given and even to myself.

Not every knot must be conquered today. Some only need to be held gently. Some need prayer. Some need time. And some need to be laid down before God until He shows us which thread to loosen next.

Before I reach for the scissors, I want to remember: Don’t cut what you can untie.

There may still be something beautiful worth saving.

Until next time, be kind to each other.

xo

Cindy

Isaiah 58:6