Mt Hood (Oregon)
We find ourselves today in the in-between season of summer and fall. Today’s forecast is calling for a high of 87 and the coffee shops are pushing pumpkin spice drinks. The other day I stacked wood for winter on an 82 degree summer day. I’m angling for every beach day I can find and also planting mums. Summer ends and fall begins, and the blessings and challenges of each season overlap to create the beauty of September.
As we walk through the in-between days of the seasons and whatever other in-betweens you find yourselves in, I leave you with this blessing and a reminder that just like the season, God can also show up in the overlap – bringing mercies you may never have seen otherwise.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
For beginnings and endings
This life is made up of so many
beginnings and so many endings.
We start new jobs and leave old ones.
We move to new cities and leave our
childhood hobbies in our parents’
basement. (Sorry, Mom.)
We become new people slowly
(hopefully kinder and funnier?).
Friends and relationships
come and go.
Dreams blossom and then they wither.
And we find ourselves here once again
at the precipice of change.
Afraid to let go,
and afraid of what will happen if we don’t.
Might this be a place of blessing too?
Blessed are we standing in the hallway
between closed doors
and ones still to come,
between the old and the new,
between the worn-in
and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit,
between who we were
and who we might become.
…
Blessed are we who take a minute
to look over our shoulders
at all we learned from what was,
the people we became,
the people who loved us into becoming.
the peace that came with familiarity.
Blessed are we who trust this timing,
and who open our hearts anew
to change, to new friends, to hope.
Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted,
but brimming with gratitude for life
so beautiful that it hurts to say goodbye.
Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead
toward a new path not yet mapped.
God, gives us courage to take this next step,
and enough for the one after that, too.
Remind us that you have gone before,
and behind, and around,
and are with us now.
In our leaving, in our arriving,
in our changes, expected or shocking,
surprise us with who we might become.
~ Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, “for beginnings and endings,” in The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (New York: Convergent, 2023), 182-183.
