Begin Again: A 7-Day Devotional By Leeana TankersleyShembull

Discovering the Practice of Beginning Again

Nine years ago, I was a brand-new mother to boy/girl twins, and everything felt enormous. My love was enormous. My fear was enormous. My self-contempt was enormous. My exhaustion, enormous. The pile of empty Diet Coke cans, enormous. The babies’ beauty, enormous. The weight of how perfect it all was, just waiting for me to mess it up, enormous.

It was in these very early days of motherhood that I read the line from the Rule of Saint Benedict, which transformed into not just a line but a lifeline and has been with me every day since those winter days almost a decade ago.

Always we begin again.

Benedict’s rule for monks called out the holiness of repetition, even the spiritual efficacy of it, though our culture preaches only the opposite. It gave a certain grace to beginnings that saved me over and over again in those days of being a beginner.

Because that’s all those days were: one beginning after another. And let’s be honest, that’s what so much of life is—learning how, and learning how again, over and over. Each day is brand new, after all. We’ve never lived this day before. 

So this emphasis on the sacredness of beginning and beginning again was a hold in what felt like vast amounts of thin air. It was permission to be unaccomplished, to be a beginner, to be brand new. More than permission, too, a sense that I was right where I should be and that the beginning space was actually a holy space, not just a layover on my way to something better.

I put the “Always we begin again” sentence in my pocket and have carried it around since. Four simple-enough words have alchemically been both a guide and a companion to me. Even on the heels of the most overwhelming moments, I could begin again. When nothing else helped or made sense, I could always begin again. 

We are a restless breed, we human beings. We want rest. We want peace from the inside out, building a life on something settled and centered inside us, but all this is hard to come by, isn’t it. Which is why I believe the practice of beginning again is one of the single most significant gifts you can give yourself.

Can you identify any areas of your life where you need to show yourself more grace or allow yourself to begin again? 

Click here  for Leeana's free 15-day devotional and Begin Again discussion guide!