The Courage to Begin Again

The Courage to Begin Again

There is a particular kind of shame that attaches itself to starting over. The sense that if we had done things properly the first time, we would not be here again — back at the beginning, back at the place of asking God for help with something we thought we had already dealt with.

But I have been reading Lamentations differently recently. His mercies are new every morning. (Lamentations 3:23) Not every year. Not when we have earned them back. Every morning. The word new in Hebrew carries the sense of being renewed, refreshed — as though the mercy that comes today is not recycled from yesterday but genuinely fresh, made available again regardless of what yesterday looked like.

Starting over, then, is not evidence of failure. It is evidence that morning has come.

The Christian life is not a straight line from where we were to where we are going. It is more like a spiral — returning sometimes to familiar struggles, but not to exactly the same place. We bring more with us each time. More self-knowledge, more grace, more of an understanding that we cannot manage this in our own strength.

Perhaps the courage required to begin again is underestimated. It would be easier, in some ways, to give up. To decide that this is simply how things are. The courage to say: I am starting again, and I believe that God's hand is still extended — that courage is not small.

Where do you need to begin again today? And can you do it without apology — returning to the one who was never surprised by where you are?