beginnings

The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.

I have found that it's not so much how you start, but how you finish that counts." -Declan

When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.

I had to start new, my ego told me that if past ever wanted me, I won't be calling it by that name.

What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.

The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step oft he way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie.

Starting a new way is never easy so...keep starting until the start sticks.

If I must start somewhere, right here and now is the best place imaginable.

... the scarlet thread,the red clay from which we were made, runs in tiny streams through all our veins, reminding us of where we began...

It's him, it always has been and it always will be ~ the only thing left now is timing.

every end should be followed by great new beginning

The cross unerringly exposes this stunningly marvelous and abruptly exquisite declaration that God will not let this single life of mine, with all of its grotesque maladies and pathetic filth pass into oblivion without unflinchingly declaring that my life carries a value worth the expenditure of His. And if I dare look upon the cross, I am utterly perplexed but wholly enraptured by the immensity of such a love as this.

As long as we__e breathing, we have a chance to start over and build a stable future.

Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.

We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage.

We can__ even remotely fathom that whatever is ending for us is always more than an ending.

Today__ ashes are tomorrow__ soil.

COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!__n the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees.