Saying no is saying yes?

This is going to come off as a dumbass post, I'm sure of it. I'll give it a shot, though. My idea, though it may sound antithetic, is that saying no to something is actually saying yes to a whole lot of other things.

One of those books that affected me as a young man was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. It's a book primarily for boys, I think, but it has some universal lessons. One of those lessons is letting go. 

The young boy in the story wanted to teach his hounds how to hunt raccoons. But he needed a coon pelt to do that. How do you get a coon pelt if your dogs don't know how to hunt coons? A raccoon trap was the answer — a hole bored into wood with a shiny trinket in the bottom. The hole had to be large enough to admit the raccoon's little hand yet small enough to hold it once it grasped the trinket and made a fist. I experience the same thing when I make a fist in a Mason jar. It's not fair, of course, for the raccoon, as they love shiny things, but it was a good way to get that first pelt. 

How many raccoons, once they had grasped the trinket, wouldn't let go? Well, all of them. They were trapped. It's in the nature of raccoons to collect shiny objects. If they had gone against nature and had let go, they'd have their freedom. But the shiny thing wouldn't be theirs. Such a hard decision. It's the perfect trap for a raccoon. It's also not hard to see the parallel to human nature, which is the constant grasping for the golden ring, so to speak. For a human, though, to tightly hold that thing which our brain tells us is trapping us can lead to a death of sorts, or certainly a paralysis. 

That's where my antithetic statement of saying no is really saying yes comes in. Once you say no to that thing that's holding you still, trapping you, limiting your decisions, you can say yes to a whole set of new things. It frees you to say yes. That's the power of saying no. 

So, what does this mean to me? I feel God has been telling me I've been saying yes to some shiny things I really want and have been limiting my ability to say yes to other things, things I really need. Like freedom. New directions. I don't know what all that entails, but it's fun to think about. Saying no is what will let me to (eventually) say yes to those things. Saying no comes first. 

This is something new for me, though I've said no to a whole lot of hurtful things over the last few years. I've extricated myself from some really unhealthy situations. Saying no to those things allowed me to say yes to other, better things. It's not always easy. One has to first know what one wants. And one has to realize the things we want aren't always good for us. 

Life is amazing. Keep making great decisions. Enjoy every moment.