Starting Over

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Most of us find ourselves bewildered at the options we now face to move forward and acclimate to a life with the restraints imposed by Covid 19. As the government lifts sanctions and rolls out openings of businesses accompanied by our constant companion of social distancing, it’s hard to know where to start. 

Do I schedule a haircut? Eat at an outdoor dining room and trust that the business owner is complying with all of the recommendations of the CDC? It’s hard to venture any beginning with this remodeled life I find myself in. I think of those folks who are making bigger decisions like daycare centers and churches. If they open, how will they achieve any gathering and keep everyone safe? Compared to my grooming choices and menu options, these choices seem overwhelming with the weight of responsibility they carry.

So I pray for those who must lead and focus on my own meager beginnings and look to Gods word for encouragment and guidance. Because I have choices before me that will impact how I live my life in this virally conscious existence. Decisions bigger than haircuts and carry out. 

Will I continue to be fearful and disguise it as prudence? Will I hoard resources convincing myself it is “good stewardship?” Will I join the endless heckle of criticism about local government, federal agencies, my local neighbors who opt out of wearing masks or direct my use of my mouth to affirm, encourage, bring hope?  Tell The Good News or pursue the sharing of the continuous supply of bad news? The one choice that the virus cannot rob me of is my mind set and view of starting over.

I think it is good for us to remind ourselves that starting over isn’t a new thing. It’s been around for a long time. If we could, what would Adam and Eve say about new beginnings? 

In my previous post, I speculated about Noah’s wife and her plight before and during the flood. I think as long as we do not move from biblical foundational truth, I think it can be helpful to examine the lives of folks who have walked before us and what their feelings might have been in their crisis of belief situations.

She dried her tears on her cloak as she washed the mud from her feet for what seemed about the one-hundredth time. Despite her joy at the sight of dry land, it had not entered her mind how dry the land wasn’t going to be when they finally disembarked from the ark. Once the animals exited the vessel, the smell left behind from their prolonged housing had left an odor she wasn’t sure she could ever eradicate. She wasn’t sure why she was so discouraged today. She had been so moved and hopeful as Noah had built the altar where they had worshipped as family. God’s presence had been overwhelming. Relief and joy had saturated every fiber of her being and thanksgiving had dominated her thoughts.

Today, decisions about housing, flocks, and gardens seemed monumental. Strength to keep the fire stoked to cook with her daughter in laws seemed to wear on her nerves and she found herself being short with them. And the mud… the endless mud.  Where to begin?

When we read accounts of folks in the Bible who face such challenges, I think it is easy to dismiss the daily challenge and just look at the epic adventure part of the experience. But life is, and can be what I refer to as “very daily.” It is usually the repetitive daily grind that eventually wears off our emotional enamel and spiritual resolve. It is in the midst of this “dailyness” that starting over begins. Not when everything is neat and tidy but usually messy and bewildering with all these loose ends hanging.

Today, I want the CDC or Dr. Fauci, or some super scientific authority to ring the all clear bell on Covid 19, but that isn’t going to happen. I want Wall Street to announce the biggest financial turn around since money was invented…unlikely. I desire to throw off my mask and embrace my friends, my family, neighborhood kids I’ve missed, but not an option. However starting over is possible in the midst of chaos.

Think of Abraham and Sarah, wealthy house dwellers. Started over in the Ur of the Chaldees and became permanent tent dwellers and became the parents of an enormous fruitful nation. How about Joseph sold into slavery. I’m sure daily life in slavery was overwhelming and hopeless, but with faith in God, he became the governor of Egypt and prospered in a famine. How about the disciples? They moved on and started over and the church itself was born. God promised in Jeremiah that He has plans for a good future for us. You and I! There is no mention of criteria in this promise that alludes to any limitations on God’s power; it just is. I take great comfort in this promise in these days of where seems like reality is pessimistic at best.

As I write these words, I remember when I began writing. I had a beloved black journal that chronicled about 6 years of my life. It contained declarations, creations, proclamations, words of devastation and perspectives of what I felt were God given revelation. It also contained several of the last biblical and philosophical conversations I Had with my beloved dad, Edison. My greatest fear was not that some stranger would be viewing my personal reflections, but rather that I would not be able to replicate some of the ideas and thoughts, and exchanges that were in it. Things about my info, my stuff, my losses, my gains, my questions, memories, all altered by the loss of my journal. I shuddered thinking about my beloved volume lying at the bottom of some dirty rusted dumpster surrounded by fast food wrappers, soggy lettuce and a ton of junk mail soiled by leaky coffee cups from Starbucks. Ironically, it was lost while I was helping my daughter, Erin, return to South Carolina after a painful divorce. This was her second chance to have peace and safety.  Every time I looked for the journal, I stopped and prayed for Erin’s new start. Every time I opened the new brown journal I was intimidated by the glare of blank pages. God used it to remind me of Erin facing a blank empty apartment 90 miles away. He comforted me with the promise from Jeremiah that He would bring new people, new activities and ministries into her life.

 It was around the same time of Hurricane Sandy and I began to think of all who faced blank days in what seemed like blank lives. I saw on the news blank spaces where homes once sat and scolded myself over the drama I had made of a lost journal. I saw a sign on the news that said, “Come back in progress.” Someone brave enough to etch out a hopeful declaration of a new beginning on a piece of salvaged wood left behind by the storm. Someone who found his or her voice in the midst of loss. God used this to inspire me. I began writing again, praying that every idea jotted down would be more inspiring, revelations more clear, questions more thoughtful. That everything I wrote would be God breathed. I asked God that I would not be too haunted by the voice of my black journal so the new brown one could not serve me. I prayed that my writing would energize me and bless God, not master me and close my mind off to Gods creative plan in a new direction. I confessed my grief over the lost diary, leaving the “why is it gone?” in my prayer closet with Christ, asking only one thing — to start over. 

Ok— you might say these are personal examples, or just examples of biblical people and you can’t relate, but God has helped others and brought good in the world down through time. The fact that a Jewish nation even exists after the atrocities of the Holocaust is a miracle. God blessed all who started over across Europe, and came to this country with their skilled trades. Ask them if starting over is possible? Of course, at great cost and sorrow, it began over time and mushroomed into a powerful influential nation with God’s help. 

Tragedy is not a respecter of persons and our news is filled with every flavor of it. Starting over is not luck or even drive; it is the force of God breathed life into our lungs that moves us on. A relationship and purpose in Christ can sustain us when all else has failed.  He can lead us out of cemeteries when we think life is over. Without Him, a start over is impossible. I worked in physical therapy for over 26 years and I learned that recovery is a way of life and something that is tangible.

In the unfamiliar it is hard to know where to start, but when I think of Noah’s wife, I recognize the mundane of “washing mud off feet ” is an act of hope in itself. I ask God today not to seek the former life, even all that I loved and had confidence in. Where most was comfortable, I asked God to lead me to the good He has for me now, and put my trust for my future fully in Him.