Starting Over...

(sigh).....I don't know about you but have you noticed that starting over in life can sometimes be a bitter sweet thing? I saw "Up in The Air" a couple weeks ago and George Clooney gave a speech about carrying around a backpack full of all of your earthly belongs and relationships..then he talked about losing all of the contents of that backpack or the whole backpack itself in a fire. He said it is a sad and difficult to lose absolutely everything but at the same time it is freeing..because now you have a little less entanglement with the things of this earth..and you have the opportunity to begin again. Then a couple of nights ago I saw "Precious" about a teenage girl who had a horrific life and after one particular night of getting into a major altercation with her mother she walked the streets that next morning and said  ," Thats why God gives us new days..." the idea was that we have the chance to start all over again and hopefully we can do better or things will be better this time. Letting go and starting over is never easy. Getting used to the new "normal" without that person or those things will never be simple or easy or without a time of heartache. I thought of my mother 5 years ago when my father passed away.. and how she had to get used the fact that the man that she loved and known since she was 18 years old, the one she had woken up every morning next to for the past forty seven years would now be gone everytime she woke up and looked at the empty pillow next her...a constant reminder of his absence. Still, I know that as the late Tupac Shakur said  "there is hope that blossoms like a rose growing from a concrete sidewalk"... the truth is we are given a new day to start things over...every day..as long as we are breathing. The truth is things will get easier the farther away we get from the situation..the more time passes..the pain will become less and less acute... My close friend Henry said,"Letting go doesn't mean you are weak..letting go actually means you are strong enough to let go". Thanks Henry. Hebrews 11:1-2