Can I Really Start Over?Sample

My youngest son did not enjoy starting fourth grade. His best friend moved away over the summer, and his new friends from summer camp went to a different school. "Who will I hang out with, Dad?!" In addition to having less time to play his favorite video games, he wasn't looking forward to homework, early bedtimes, and the extra responsibility that the school year brought.

There were some tearful days over the next few weeks; truthfully, that school year was one of his most challenging. Friendships didn't come easy, and his best friend's parents stopped returning our text message requests for FaceTime calls. I struggled to watch my son try to move forward, as his mind kept taking him back to the good old days of 3rd grade.

My son's experience in this transition between grades reminds me of what I've heard from so many people I've helped to start over. While it's unsurprising that pain from the past can be an obstacle to our future, you need to know that good in your past can also be a significant obstacle.

Sometimes, we have difficulty letting go of the past because we wonder if our best days are behind us. Like my son, we wonder if we'll ever have a relationship as unique as that one. We want to keep a house, a job, a team, or an experience. We grieve the pain of bad experiences and the loss of good stuff and great people.

If you want to start over and sense God is doing something new in you or around you, then even something good from your past can keep you from grasping something God is doing in your future.

Consider the people of Israel in the book of Ezra. After seventy years in Babylonian captivity, 42,000 Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed many years earlier. At the end of Ezra 3, the people came together to see the new temple's foundation laid.

While many of the younger people there rejoiced with joy at this exciting moment in their rebuilding process, the shouts of joy became intermixed with the sounds of weeping and grieving. The older priests and community members who had seen the original temple built by Solomon were overwhelmed at how much smaller this new temple would be. This older group grieved the loss of the old temple and wept bitterly.

Indeed, all 42,000 people who returned to Jerusalem were grateful to be freed from captivity. However, some struggled to be excited for the future because of their relationship with the past. It was hard to see a promising future when it seemed to pale compared to the greatness of the past.

I can relate to these weeping men and women in Ezra 3 as I struggled to let go of the good in my past during the transition I described on day 1. I knew I was where God wanted me to be, but I wondered about all the good things I'd left behind in making that move.

If I could go back in time and share a Bible verse with that version of myself, I would encourage myself to read and consider Isaiah 6:1, where the prophet writes, "In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." Those ten words describe both grief and joy, sadness and celebration.

If you're struggling to move forward, I want you to know that feeling conflicting emotions is okay. God is present with you in those feelings and in the middle of losing things and people you love. Perhaps, like the prophet Isaiah, you will see God's majesty and glory in the same year you let go of what you once held dear. God is always at work, often in the places and times when we least expect Him.

In the next day's reading, we'll look at how we grow and change to become all that God purposed and planned for us to be.