“Pilgrim” my teardrop camper is settled among sand dunes across from a boardwalk on a crisp March day. I’m still surprised and relieved when I get her hooked up, drive her safely through the tunnel, back her up, and put her leveling stabilizers down. I enjoy Pilgrim’s cocoon kind of warmth away from the hustle and bustle—a place to ponder and rest.
Pilgrim represents courage to go beyond fear and loss. I don’t feel all that courageous, but that’s because fear is what makes courage necessary.
These first three years without Steve have demanded all of my attention. They have been exhausting, painful, lonely, scary, and—sacred. I say sacred because of the way family and friends have given extravagant comfort and care. Grief cracked me open in protest, prayer, and the slow learning of patience. And God is filling that cracked open space with courage in “a new dawn.” Has that ever happened to you?
I can feel the gentle strength of God’s hand on my back, as He steps with me across “the threshold between sorrow and new life; between honoring grief and opening to possibilities.”1 I honor grief by remembering Steve. I open myself to new possibilities by living in the expectancy of God’s new plan. Please join me at the beach in a one-minute video below.
1. Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening, (Notre Dame, IN; Soren Books, 2018), 11.
The Treasure: Take courage to step over thresholds into new beginnings with God.
If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:
I’ve been thinking about thresholds lately—about stepping over a line into something different—into the unknown, because we know we’re begin led to a different place in our lives. We never know what’s around the next corner when we step through a threshold. We just know that there’s been an ending to one season in our life…and a beginning of another one.
It takes courage to step through a threshold. I just stepped through a threshold from pain into new beginnings. There can be a lot of fear in new beginnings. Whenever we say, “I don’t want to.” God says, “Don’t miss it.” Take the next step. I’m stepping into joy from deep sorrow, not because of the pain but because of how the pain changed me. I believe when we wrestle well through pain…we can embrace life and joy in ways that we never could have if the pain hadn’t occurred.
Like someone once told me, “This trip is over…but you have many miles to go.”
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