New Beginnings Are A'Coming
Who out there is ready for something new?
“With every ending comes a new beginning.”
This quote has brought comfort to me in many moments this past year where I stood confronted with situations that forced me from my old way of life. Ending old relationships and destructive patterns marked a large part of my year. I had to come to the realization that until I let go of the people and behaviors that were holding me back, I may never see the other side of what’s possible.
Learning how to loosen my grip on the past has allowed me to see that with letting go comes hope for what lies in the unknown landscape ahead.
My guess is that many of you are ready to move on from 2020 with the hope of something fresh and promising. This year has forced its hand upon us toward endings we weren’t expecting. But with that has also come new ways of living and operating. Whether we were ready for it or not, the painful transition toward newness was something we all had to face and experience.
Like it or not, endings are a natural part of life.
They are woven into the fabric of life itself, both when it goes well and also when it doesn’t. On the good side of life, for us to ever get to a new level, a new tomorrow, or the next step, something has to end. For there to be anything new, old things always have to die and we are faced with the decision to let go and move forward.
Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.
Growth itself demands that we move on.
Endings are not only a seasonal part of life, they are a requirement for living and thriving. Being alive requires that we sometimes kill off things in which we were once invested, uproot what we previously nurtured, and tear down what we built for an earlier time.
It takes tremendous courage to say goodbye to the familiar, but with the loss of yesterday comes the hope of a new tomorrow.
As you think of this past year, I invite you to reflect on what you had to release in order for something new to blossom. Are you seeing the fruits that come with this pruning process? What are you hoping to see come alive on the dawn of this new year?
