A Promise of a New Journey

Greetings,

There are times when we are taken down a path in life that we never really expected we would be taken down. In all honesty, I am being taken down more than one of those paths and it has been an eye-opening experience. It has all helped me see the world a little differently and while the paths I am heading down are struggles in their own right, I am seeing changes within that I didn’t know were needed.

It's a funny thing, isn’t it? You live life expecting one result and one path forward but as you embark upon the journey things lead a different way and the result, while difficult for a season, is always much better than we could ever imagine. 

I’m at that place yet with the paths I am being led down. In truth, the path ahead is still a dimly lit road amid that forest that I was talking about in one of my other posts or emails. We have these moments where we have to choose to surrender to a higher power (in my case that is God) but getting to the point of surrender is much more difficult than we could ever dream.

I am hopeful, but also facing the reality of where I am being led. While the details aren’t really what matters, the idea is there and taking over almost every aspect of my life. I am sure there are others out there who feel the same way. 

We hold on to the things that we dreamed about as children and young adults hoping things will work out the way we want, but we have to come to that place where we have to let go of all of it. We long to get to that place but something continues to hold us down and we just can’t get a ‘handle’ on it.

It is a stressful place to be, and the weight of the world seems to get heavier with each passing day. We look for those little glimpses of encouragement along the way, only to find more struggles along the way. Life in itself almost becomes an enigma of lost hopes and hidden costs. In the midst of all these things in my life, I found myself walking amid a damaged forest along the Pathfinder trail, and that is where I began to see it—that glimpse of hope in the midst of the chaotic destruction that still clutters a once beautiful forest full of life. When the tornado hit my town in May of 2024, everything in this forest was destroyed.

Some of the images you’ve already seen in this post are of that destruction. But today, I began to see the results of the changing seasons taking shape amongst all of the destruction. Little beacons of hope are starting to appear everywhere this destruction has taken over.

Where there was once nothing but death and loss, the joyful undertones of new life are finding their way into the light that shines down upon that forest trail every day the sun shines. It's a beautiful tapestry being painted by the creator of all things and He is reminding us that, while those seasons of pain exist and always will be there, we can have hope that things will get better and that the promise of a solidary rainbow will always be there. So what's the moral of this post?

Well, it's simply that even in the midst of the struggles we face, there is something we can put our faith in, and that is the promise of the changing seasons. 

See you in the pages, 

MJE