Beginning again, in the middle…
It is an unsettling thing to have new beginnings shoved into the middle of your life. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter if those new beginnings are of your own choice, or forced on you by others. A change in career, relocation, divorce or remarriage, the shuffling of family life can all leave us feeling lost in the middle.
Maybe it’s because, by the middle of our lives, we have a sense of who we are and what we are about. We’ve mostly left behind the wondering of our youth, and lived out the choices we made. It once seemed that all the big decisions of our lives were behind us. Who we chose to be, how we chose to live were decided in earlier decades.
And yet, now in the middle, we find ourselves on unfamiliar ground. Even small changes can usher us past a threshold we didn’t see coming. We find ourselves with new freedoms, and new possibilities and we can feel unmoored from the life we’ve known, and if we aren’t prepared, a bit exposed to the winds that blow.
Suddenly, we are vulnerable without the trappings of who we have been in our previous lives. As we navigate new people, new demands, and new opportunities. We find that we cannot rely on the shorthand of what was familiar and we must again introduce ourselves, decide again who we will be.
It’s shocking to me how vulnerable this process can be. Sometimes, it feels that without the familiar trappings of the last season of my life, I am uncovered and exposed. I think we respond to this vulnerability in two ways, maybe we run wild and free after many years of feeling too tethered to the responsibilities of our lives. Or, maybe we pick up the tattered fabric of our lives and weave them together with anxiety and worry to provide cover.
There are other options as well. We can take some time, and make some space to consider the pieces of our lives, to honor their value and consider their importance moving forward. Maybe there are some things that mattered and you are grateful for, that will be left behind. There may be some new spaces that you will want to allow new things to grow.
The middle of our lives is a perfect space for new beginnings. Here is a chance to decide again who we will be, how we will embrace our lives, and what we will pour our energies to. So, where are you beginning again?
