There is a particular kind of courage that doesn’t get talked about enough — the courage to begin again.
Not the courage to start something new from scratch. But the courage to return to something you walked away from. To pick back up what you put down. To try again after you failed. To recommit after you drifted. To say — I am not done yet. I am not finished. I choose to begin again.
We live in a culture that celebrates starting and finishing but is very uncomfortable with the messy middle — the season of stopping and restarting, of two steps forward and one step back, of wanting to change and struggling to change and wanting to change again. We tend to treat that season as evidence that something is wrong with us when in reality it is simply evidence that we are human.
Grace is not a one-time event. It is a renewable resource.
Every morning the Psalmist reminds us — the mercies of God are new every morning. Not every year. Not every season. Every morning. Which means every morning you are given a fresh beginning. A clean slate. An invitation to try again without the weight of yesterday’s failures defining today’s possibilities.
Ernest Holmes taught that the nature of the Divine is infinite givingness — that the universe is always conspiring toward our wholeness, always making room for our return, always extending the invitation to begin again no matter how many times we have walked away.
I have needed this truth in my own life more times than I can count. The ministry that sat dormant for too long. The practice that fell away. The version of myself I abandoned when the world got loud. And each time — without exception — the invitation was still there when I came back. The door was still open. The grace was still available.
It is still available to you.
Whatever you have been putting off. Whatever you walked away from that you know in your soul you are not finished with. Whatever beginning has been waiting patiently for you to find your courage — today is the day.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to be ready. You just have to begin.
Begin again. Begin imperfectly. Begin afraid if you must. But begin.