On the Ends of Eras and New Beginnings

 

I keep a prayer journal. Last year was a bumpy ride, so I decided to look back on the Leap Day entry I made for the month of February on prayers and answers and compared it to this year.

I found an entry about an anthology I planned that fell apart. But it gave me an opportunity to rework the idea I had and refine it more. That anthology’s theme became my motto for this year’s writing.

There was an entry about finding a new equine vet—and that vet, four months ago, helped save the life of one of my horses.

There was an entry asking the Lord to hear a prayer that several folks and I had been keeping diligently for a long time. We’re living in that answer now, even though it didn’t come around the way we quite expected it to. It comes with a lot of hard work and even more prayer to stay the course, but man, am I grateful for it.

I found entries thanking the Lord for friends…who dipped out of the picture with no explanation less than a month later. Between then and now were many entries asking the Lord to help me forgive and move on. And for the most part, I have.

There were entries asking the Lord to move in a certain way, and He didn’t. While that was the biggest struggle from last year, I see now that in not answering the way I hoped, He was building something greater. More heartache accompanied that path, but it was His will.

The past couple years, it seems, have been filled with goodbyes, chapters closing, and new ones starting. I know I’m not the only one. But I can earnestly say that, if not for the hurt of leaving, we would never find the next chapter the Lord has in store for us. If not for the hurt of someone ditching us, we wouldn’t find genuine friends that deserve space in our hearts. If not for the pain of growth, we wouldn’t find the good plans the Lord has in store, oftentimes not only in the end of our race, but in the midst of that very pain. If you’re in the middle of it right now, in the in-between of closing chapters and starting new ones and the hectic, mind-melting hurt wrapping the two together…take heart. I can make no promises, but I can tell you what’s happened in my life.