Gratitude for New Beginnings

I sit in my prayer room this morning and feel grateful for so much. It has been a full and fruitful summer and it is not over yet.  One of the great blessings for me has been the addition of Audrey into our home as she begins a new life here in Columbus.

She has had her first week of teaching at the Charles School and my joy is listening to her share about meeting the kids, working with teachers and administrators and preparing for the new year.  I call her ET - the person that comes in from outer space (well, actually Arizona) and brings new life to a family.  And that is what she is doing for me and Chuck.

I am also grateful as I watch the grandkids prepare for a new school year.  As I write this, Marnie has taken time off from work to get the girls haircuts and new clothes.  Kacey has posted in facebook the trials of taking a teenager shopping who rejects any of Mom's suggestions.  She is really getting payback here!  I remember it all well and like watching and not having to actually participate in these rituals of the new school year.

This year I am going to start training to be a "supervisor" in the Wellstreams program and am revisiting some of the books that I read years ago.  This morning I reread the preface to the book Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther.  I was struck by these words written by Alan Jones:

  Human life isn't worth living without our willingly accepting responsibility for our behavior, yet that would be too heavy a burden without the possibility of forgiveness. 
Those of us who hope for a more caring and humane world had better be aware of forgiveness (both human and divine) if we are going to navigate the stormy seas of human relations.
Much of the pain could be avoided if we knew how to frame questions about our longings and were willing to forgive one another, even as we seek to make one another accountable.  Spiritual  direction, at its best.

Later he writes:
Margaret Guenther knows what it means to grow into being someone.  There is waiting, stillness, and hope.  "When in doubt," she writes, "I always assume that God is at work, that is, the person is pregnant."

And so my gratitude is for my family  and their new beginnings and the awareness of the possibility of new life for myself and for everyone.   God is at work guiding us as we are - no matter how old - growing into being someone - ourselves!

I am going to end this post with a writing by Melodie Beattie that Audrey shared with her classes this week.

Beginnings can be delicate or explosive. They can start almost invisibly or arrive with a big bang.

Beginnings hold the promise of new lessons to be learned, new territory to be explored, and old lessons to be recalled, practiced, and appreciated.

Beginnings hold ambiguity, promise, fear, and hope.

Don’t let the lessons, the experiences of the past, dampen your enthusiasm for beginnings.

Just because it’s been hard doesn’t mean it will always be that difficult. Don’t let the heartbreaks of the past cause you to become cynical, close you off to life’s magic and promise.

Open yourself wide to all that the universe has to say.

Let yourself begin anew. Pack your bags. Choose carefully what you bring, because packing is an important ritual. Take long some humility and the lessons of the past. Toss in some curiosity and excitement and what you haven’t yet learned.

Say your good-byes to whose you’re leaving behind.

 Don’t worry who you will meet or where you will go. The way has been prepared. The people you are to meet will be expecting you.

A new journey has begun.

 Let it be magical. Let it unfold.