What if loss and endings are the only way to find a new beginning?
“The road rolls on like a welcome mat….”
A confident, nasally voice slurs the words casually, and we crank up the volume as we speed down the freeway.
“To a better place than the one we’re at….”
His optimism is contagious, and we let our shoulders relax and roll the windows down. Our hair flies akimbo, as does our decorum.
“And I ain't got no kinda plan, But I've had all of this town I can stand…”
I’m slightly envious of this guy who relaxes his shoulders and takes an impulsive risk. When did being responsible and taking care of business become just being old and stuck? When did my grip tighten, and when did New become fearful?
Can I let go? Just a little?
“It don't matter to me; Wherever we are is where I wanna be. And, honey, for once in our life Let's take our chances and roll the dice.”
I prop my bare feet up on the dashboard and now we are both singing along, slightly off-key:
“I can be your lucky penny;
You can be my four-leaf clover. Starting over.”
Starting over.
My mind quickly replays the last 12 months.
I spent a great deal of 2020 trying to hold back the losses, and keep life from unravelling. Hold my sweet old folks together, get my workplace prepared for pandemical changes, care for All The Things with one hand and beat off COVID with the other. Trying to keep life the same is like trying to hold back the debris of a tsunami as it slowly pushes broken trash up our formerly orderly streets.
The losses came anyway; you know it as well as I. Our freedoms, our friends, our rhythms. Disunity nationally, and even more painfully and personally, close to home. For us it also included the loss of the generation before us--our precious Olds. And incrementally, our jobs. And with all of that, a bit of our confidence.
The old normal had died; no Band-Aid was going to bring back the comfort of the way we were.
For a while we kept putting our finger in the dyke, but eventually it became clear that fix was temporary and entirely inadequate. The old normal had died; no Band-Aid was going to bring back the comfort of the way we were.
It’s worth aching over, worth lament and sorrow and treasuring the dear and good that once supported us. It’s worth archiving, remembering, and mourning. But if I stand still with my finger in the dyke, protecting the past and trying to recreate it, at some point I, too, become one more broken casualty, swept along by the relentless march of loss and resentment.
What if loss itself is the doorway forward?
“Starting over,” the song croons on.
“What if?” I wonder. What if loss and endings are the only way to find a new beginning?
What if I stop staring backward? What if Good lies both behind and ahead of us? And what if loss itself is the doorway forward?
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
ALL the days of my life.”[1]
Can beginnings happen without endings?
My cupboards and closets know what it’s like to save all the past, and yet keep adding more. The treasured Old and the delightful New now crowd each other, jumbled together in a confusing tangle, and the task of finding what I need today is impeded by the faded and unused pieces of yesterday. I paw through piles in frustration.
My closets need pruning. And maybe my life does as well.
A week ago I ended a job I once thought of as my dream job. When my personal things were packed away and the office grew quiet, I stood feeling empty and uprooted and vulnerable, and let the feelings wash over me--gratefulness, gratitude, and also the pain of the ending. Tears flowed. It’s true that my way forward is out, but that also means walking through endings.
Letting go is the bitter path to Forward.
And Forward is turning out to be good, too. On Monday I stepped into a new office, new role, new challenges, new beauties unlike the old. Self-doubt—yes—but also new growth. A chance to sweep out what is no longer serving me, and welcome a new beginning.
It’s a little wild and risky, both terrifying and exhilarating. What if? What if I’m not enough?
But what if I am?
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
Tomorrow it’s my husband’s turn to begin a new position in a new place. No, it’s not safe and snug and predictable. It’s both scary and thrilling, like letting go of one monkey bar to grab the next rung. Can I stretch far enough? What if I fall?
Starting over. We feel the exhilaration of risk and the wind in our faces, and know there’s some youth left yet in our old bones. We shake, but hope is forward.
“Nobody wins afraid of losing, And the hard roads are the ones worth choosing. Some day we'll look back and smile And know it was worth every mile…”[2]
What ending are you resisting?
And what if that ending is the doorway to your new beginning?
New buds poke through the soil, feeding on the decay of a different season's beauty.
Starting over.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19 NIV
[1] Psalm 23:6
[2] Stapleton, Chris. “Starting Over.” Starting Over. Mercury Nashville, 2020, track 1. www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chrisstapleton/startingover.html
LOVE this.