A New Beginning...Again

It is time for a new beginning again. It's amazing how beginnings become the focus of spring and Passover. I guess also included in beginnings is future.

This past week, I was forced into looking for a new beginning. Which is fine. It is opening new doors. I'm surprised at the ways God takes me and redirects me and says, "Well, that's not exactly where I want you heading. Here, I'll remove you from this place and put you over there." And at first it's always hard to deal with. "God, why are you pulling everything out from under me again." And His reply is, "Hold on, you'll see, trust Me."

I still struggle with that trusting Him stuff. To not have complete control over where your life is heading is frustrating. I want control. I want to make decisions and have them work out. But that does not usually happen.

In me, I long for spring. I long for the opening of blossoms. I long for the toil and sweat of rooting around in a garden, watching things spring to life. All that turbulence of turning up the ground, adding water, fertilizer, planting seeds, it's invigorating. I think that is how God may view the spring. The Passover. Here we all go shuffling through stuff we have kept in boxes in the back of our closets from year to year, finding what to keep and what to get rid of. All the time searching our lives for the same type of thing, only spiritually. Seeing what dead things to toss out, what needs to be watered, what needs to be stirred up. And God sees to that stirring up.

And after all this searching, this tossing out of old stuff we don't need, we start afresh, anew. We are given a new beginning. Not that everything is gone, that happens at baptism, but a place where we can re-evaluate and take inventory of where we are and where we should be heading. A place where the future is looked at and planned towards. Where am I heading? Where are you heading? What lies ahead for each of us this next year? Where do we want to go compared to where God wants us to go? Where is God leading each of us?

Currently, I cannot answer those questions. They sneak up on me at night and in the day around each corner waiting to pounce. But I've been here before. Hopefully, this time I'll learn better to trust in Him instead of looking for my own way out.