At Every End There is a New Beginning
Everyone gets a little nostalgic at the close of a year – this one perhaps more than most as we mark the close of a decade as well. We inherently celebrate that at every end – no matter how bitter or sweet – there is a new beginning, full of promise and unblemished hope.
For our family – closing this year, closing this decade – that new beginning means more than it ever has before.
A little over ten years ago we transitioned from two full-time salaries in influential positions at jobs we loved to pursue new dreams. We had our first baby, moved home to Chicago, and eventually sold our first home. I became a stay-at-home mom and began writing this blog. Mike started college and class by class, conquered each degree – an associates, bachelors, and masters – while simultaneously working and growing our family by a second and third son.
We made this enormous shift in our lives full of the anticipation and promise of new adventure and smooth transitions, believing that this change was the best possible decision for our family, and because of that conviction, we expected it would be easy.
What we entered instead was a decade of hard days and heartache, of waiting and disappointment, of loneliness and struggle. We’ve prayed many prayers through this season, but for the last several years the one that comes to mind first and foremost is the plea that God would shorten the days we had left in this space, so that we would be able to endure it.
We lived good moments beside the difficult ones. We experienced miracles and victories and wins that will never be forgotten. But we stand at the edge of this decade most grateful that it’s over and that we survived.
Throughout it all this space became a release for me – a place I could wrestle with my feelings and my faith. Most of the personal posts I wrote directly or indirectly referenced this struggle and my perception of it. Most explained just enough to share the challenge, but not enough to really convey the details, and for now I’ll probably keep it that way. Despite the years, the reflection, the prayer, it is still a tender story – one I believe I’m called to share – just not today in this space.
What I am compelled to share on this final day of 2019 is that by God’s grace and His unmerited favor this season that we’ve struggled through for the last decade is finally, finally over.
This particular page turn in our story is the one we will always look back on as the one we knew God as The-One-Who-Remembers. Every prayer we prayed, every promise we heard God whisper to our hearts through this long desert season, God has made true for us. Every time we stood in faith trusting Jehovah-Jireh, the One-Who-Provides, despite the realities around us, has been validated in Jesus’ name. Every moment of weakness, every tear shed in brokenness, has been accounted for and redeemed. He has shown us in real and tangible ways how He is the Waymaker, the One-Who-Sees, the One-Who-Leads, the One-Who-Guides.
And even though the road has been long and hard to get here, I would not change a day of it for any other story, because this is the one that made us. This is the one that taught us how to pray, how to believe, how to expect the miraculous. This is the one that made faith come alive inside our hearts, and taught us how to walk with Jesus, how to see Him even when we couldn’t feel Him there. This is the season that cemented everything we knew in our heads into the deepest places of our hearts. This is the story that has prepared us for what is to come, and so we will embrace it with every ounce of strength in our souls.
At every end there is a new beginning, and so we straddle this place where the year turns from one into another, with a heart of thanksgiving for all God has brought us through, and for all He is bringing us toward.