Sometimes what looks like decay is really God doing holy work underground.
When a season ends, when a relationship dissolves, when a dream fades—it’s easy to think we’ve failed. But endings aren’t punishments; they’re invitations to trust the sacred work beneath the surface.
Marcia Sutton: “Incomplete endings inhibit new beginnings.”
Author Lyanda Lynn Haupt calls it “beneathness”—the unseen life in the soil – dirt, creepy crawly bugs and worms, all of it is where the living and the dead meet in quiet collaboration. The same thing happens in us. The sorrows the joys, the intentional and unplanned endings, Spirit simply takes what we don’t need to carry anymore and composts it into wisdom.
My father, an organic farmer in the Ozarks, understood this. The land there was rocky and hard, so he built raised beds, layering compost, leaves and kitchen scraps until he’d created his own living soil. Over time, what was lifeless became rich and fertile.
It’s been said, “You have to feed the ground that feeds you.”
Our spiritual soil works the same way. If we never let anything die—old stories, roles, identities—we starve the ground of our becoming.
So let it rot.
Let the old break down into something new.
Life knows what to do with loss.
As Emerson wrote, “The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
Even in decay, God is alive and moving.
The ground of your being is holy—and it’s working within you, whether you are aware of it or not.
