To look ahead

Julia ♦ October 8, 2021 ♦ Leave a comment

Drew ventures forth on the Yukon trail, if only in his imagination.  Here’s to beginnings!
Skagway, Alaska, June 2000

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”― Graham Greene

“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” ― Meister Eckhart

Today is my 700th daily post, and that number rather amazes me.  Nearly two years ago, I began this blog as a way of coping with wave after wave of devastating news.  I invited others to join me in refusing to succumb to despair when there are always so many reasons to rejoice.

Some of you have been with me from the very beginning, and others joined along the way; I have appreciated the encouragement of each and every one of you who has visited and left your comments and “likes” on my posts.  As we approach the two-year anniversary of this little outpost in cyberspace, I have some special things planned to celebrate; I hope to be posting more about that very soon.

Today I invite you to see each day as a beginning.  While we think of autumn as nearing the end of the year, it does mark a logical beginning point in a variety of ways.

Students and teachers return to a new school year in many parts of the world, and nature is shedding her fading flowers and foliage in preparation for a fresh spring that will be coming soon.  Landscapers tell us this is the best time to plant new shrubs at our homes, since root growth happens most quickly now.

Some of us already are starting to prepare for the beginning of another holiday season and the calendar’s New Year, which will be here before we know it.

Since I started this blog, Jeff has come through numerous intense treatments for stage IV cancer, including two major surgeries, several minor ones, six weeks of daily radiation, and four different chemotherapy regimens.  He now stands at the threshold of exploring participation in promising treatments of a newer, more experimental but hopefully less traumatic nature. So he can rightly see this time as the beginning of a new phase of his life, as he continues his quest to be among the 5% with his diagnosis who reach the five-year survival mark.

He has reached an even more impressive two-year milestone than I have, because doctors told us “about two years” was the average survival time of patients with his diagnosis who took the original chemotherapy regimen he started in December 2012.  Not only is he still alive, but he is currently well enough to continue working full time, and to be considered for further treatment opportunities.  We praise God for abundant mercies, including the warm thoughts and prayers of so many in this online community and elsewhere.

How about you? What new beginnings might you be marking today?  Every time we awaken to a new day, it’s a gift– an opportunity to grow, give, receive, rejoice and press ahead.  Others have traveled this journey ahead of us, and we follow in their footsteps, determined to leave a slightly improved trail for those who follow.  In the spirit of T. H. White’s Arthurian epic The Once and Future King, which ends with the words “The Beginning,” I hope you will join us as we start each day in faith that all will someday be made new.

One year ago today:

Let us begin

This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.