Scripps Sunday #69- part 1

as you have closed the door on summer and are beginning your junior year, 

I thought these words were so beautiful to consider after this first week of your semester.... 

 for beginnings and endings

This life is made up of so many beginnings and so many endings.

We start new jobs and leave old ones.

We move to new cities and leave our childhood hobbies in our parents’

basement. (Sorry, Mom.)

We become new people slowly (hopefully kinder and funnier?).

Friends and relationships come and go.

Dreams blossom and then they wither.

And we find ourselves here once again

at the precipice of change.

Afraid to let go,

and afraid of what will happen if we don’t.

Might this be a place of blessing too?

Blessed are we standing in the hallway

between closed doors

and ones still to come,

between the old and the new,

between the worn-in

and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit,

between who we were

and who we might become.

God, make it remotely possible

to grow and change,

become open to new adventures, and

untethered to routine

or to the same-old.

Because the anxiety rising in my shoulders and filling my throat

tells me I am unlikely, unwilling,

to step forward.

Blessed are we who take a minute

to look over our shoulder

at all we learned from what was,

the people we became,

the people who loved us into becoming.

The peace that came with familiarity.

Blessed are we who trust this timing,

and who open our hearts anew

to change, to new friends, to hope.

Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted,

but brimming with gratitude for a life

so beautiful that it hurts to say goodbye.

Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead

toward a new path not yet mapped.

God, give us courage to take this next step,

and enough for the one after that, too.

Remind us that you have gone before,

and behind, and around,

and are with us now.

In our leaving, in our arriving,

in our changes, expected or shocking,

surprise us with who we might become.