begin anew

Across the table she smiled knowingly.
"It really is just so hard to get your life started."

My heart skipped a beat.
I thought I had already begun...
I thought it had already started?

She meant the career, family-building, home-making life.

She meant a season I've yet to come to.

What she said was not wrong.

What she said made me think.

I get this sense of finality... when I think about my life the way it is now.

This season is about to end.

I am in the dead middle of a winter.

My emotional, social, even spiritual life are buried deep in cold, preserving snow.

But I hear it some days...

the sound of ice melting.

And I know the seasons are about to change.

-

With that sense of finality, along with that sense of change, I feel a paralyzing fear.

Because everything familiar will soon be gone.

What is comfortable, habit, normal, will disappear.

And I feel helpless.... as if I am starting back at square one.

New job, new home, new city, new people, new school.

The past four years or so there have been a lot of transitions and changes in my life.

More than I can really count.

But there have been some constants...

Small things I could rely on to stay the same.

-

It is time for the constants to change.

-

And I feel like all of this was for naught...

These three and a half years spent at a two year college.

These four years spent in an office.

Three years learning the roads of downtown Lexington, where to get the best cup of coffee, the shortcuts home.

-

I was struggling with this desolate feeling a few afternoons ago.

Starting over.

The thought just broke my heart.

I feel like I have come so far...

Only to return to the drawing board.

Futile.

Wasted?

It's a nasty word.

-

On this afternoon, I was on Limestone.

Just past UK hospital, the light at Washington Street to be exact.

And a Volvo passed by.

As the Volvo drove ahead of me, I saw on the bumper a single sticker.

It looked homemade, the way it was cut.

"begin anew".

-

I dug for a pen.

Wrote on my palm.

Watched the Volvo drive away.

I marveled at the idea of God showing up on the bumper of a car.

-

I knew this was the answer.

Not starting over.

Not square one.

-

Yes, back to the drawing board.

But I am returning with a new set of skills.

With new eyes.

With more calluses on my hands.

With stronger muscles.

-

It is not starting over.

Because I grew this season.

The old garments won't fit any longer....

-

Very soon, I will begin anew.

Adding.

Building.

Reinforcing.

-

And I wonder if that is not, in fact, the beauty of it all.

The tragedy.

The romance.

It's the purpose.

It's the story.

-

So what else is there to do? But return and anticipate change.