There is a restlessness that keeps yanking on my sleeve trying to get my attention. I have ignored it, pretending it isn’t actually as annoying as it is. I am way past mid-life for it be the sort of crisis that would cause me to buy a convertible sports car and leave all that I love for something new. It’s not that. I am far too content with my life and the people who matter most to me. It is something in my spirit, I think. Rather than asking me to leave, it is asking me to show up better: to show up to myself in ways I abandoned longer ago than I even remember. Since I failed to show up bravely last year as my “word for the year” said I would, now it is just resigned to asking me to take some steps toward beginning.

To begin is to invite fear to a party we aren’t even sure we want to go to. Before we can find our way to that comfy chair in the corner right next to the snack table, criticism, judgment and failure have all asked us to dance. To begin is to know that what we start may not be sustainable, but we begin anyway. The world, especially the digital one through its veil of anonymity, is not always a safe place to expose or explore: especially when life is not always what you thought it might be and feelings are tender about that. However, a little bravery, risk and trust come and ask for my hand, lift me to my feet and invite this sleepy soul that craves peace more than anything to follow their lead. 

You know how you know that something needs to change but you don’t fully know what? What I do know is it will only begin if I begin. Begin a clearer way of seeing; wiping clean the lens of only my own experiences I have been dimly seeing through. Begin a posture more inclined to listen, to lean in and not seek for my turn to speak. Begin to move my feet in step with the rhythm of a new dance and less prone to step in wet cement. Begin a new season on paths less traveled, at least by me. Begin, when not to is to hit snooze and fall asleep to myself. Again, for the 4,872nd time. To begin is to put my snacks down, get up from that cozy chair and dance; to move my feet past my self-imposed limitations and my self-conscious missteps. To be attentive to new rhythms and follow their lead even if I’m not very coordinated and someone might snicker or point.

Begin because God Himself is in all our beginnings. “In the beginning, God created … ” and made something new. In Christ, He continues this work and makes “all things new” again and again. As He is in all our beginnings, He is also in our necessary endings: jobs, relationships, habits, family, a way of thinking, fear, shame, disappointment, loss; He is with us in all of it. He is for us in all of it. To begin something new in us, He may need to bring to an end any diversion or obstacle to the thing He wants to begin in us. Necessary losses that allow something new to cut in and have the next dance.

In our beginning, God … Yes, God, be with us because only if we follow your lead will we take steps in the right direction. And even then we can’t be trusted to not dance to the music in our own heads. And for those of us that may need to close a door bringing an end to something old, create for us a door to those new beginnings, even if the door itself is heavy with painful endings and fear is waiting on the other side hoping for the next dance.