With a new year comes people declaring their resolutions for the upcoming year. Finding areas of their lives they want to improve on or challenges they will try to uphold for the next twelve months. We see January as a new beginning, a restart button on our lives and ourselves. We do this so often in our lives that we begin to rely on these “new beginnings” to make the change we want. Next month I’ll do better, I’ll start my diet on Monday, I’ll get all A’s next semester.
Why are these necessary? Why do we constantly desire a fresh start? Maybe we see an area of our lives we are unsatisfied with or we need to declare we are starting over to make it stick.
We are missing a huge part of this process. We keep searching for a chance to have a new beginning when the beginning is too far in our past to reach. This process of health, hard work, success, love, or accomplishment started years ago. Restarting the process just puts us at square one.
Instead of declaring a new beginning and cutting off the past; decide you are going after a new ending. If you aren’t happy with something in your life, by all means, work to change it.
But acknowledge how far you have come…then figure out what you want the new ending to look like and go towards that.
This beautiful life is a constant process and restarting when we are not happy does nothing but label the last season as a failure. Be proud of your past; wear it with honor because it has made you the person you are today.
If people ask about the darkest parts of your story, tell them with pride, and more importantly tell them your new ending. Don’t follow up your past with how you are going to change, like you’ve gotten it all wrong thus far. Instead tell them where you are going. Tell them about the person you are growing to be, because new endings are the only things we can work towards. New beginnings aren’t possible, we began so long ago.
As a child my Father told me he grew up not being proud of his last name. He did not know his Father and hated having the name of a man who left him. He always wanted to change it to the name his step siblings had, to belong to something that already meant something. Instead of ignoring his past and being shameful of his name, he made a decision. He chose to live in a way that would make his future children proud to have the last name Daugherty.
He chose his new ending.
He didn’t have a new beginning and take a different name. He decided where he wanted to end and worked towards that.
I can tell you, he succeeded. I couldn’t be more proud to be his daughter. To have the name Daugherty and be apart of the strong family it represents.
This applies to every area of your life. Work, family, relationships, school, faith. Look back on where you have been and decide where you want to go. Live in a way that moves you closer to the new ending you desire. Love the life you have lived, thank God everyday for what He has brought you through and ask Him to lead you to your new ending.
Love your past
Love yourself
Love your new endings
