A New Chapter in the Book of Life

I’m not sure if I had heard or read this statement about having a new chapter in the book that we call our life, but I really liked the sound of it. It brings to mind that this statement is all about change.

So, think about it this way…..

According to the website, antimaximalist.com, “Closing a chapter in life is a metaphorical phrase that means to move on from a specific time period.” I think of it sometimes more as having a change in your life that may cause us some stress or makes us look at our life in a different way. That’s also how I view life. Life is about changes and adapting to those changes. Some of those changes can be great, like a marriage or the birth of a child. However, some of those changes can knock us for a loop and get us out of our routine. Those are the changes that can bring about stress and tension. We don’t know what to do about them because those changes may have caused us to do something different or got us out of the routine that we were in.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about: I recently had a coworker who has an elderly parent who fell and broke her hip. Her mother does not live close by (in Alabama, actually) and the other sisters had decided that it was her turn to bring her mom here (to Louisiana) so that she could deal with everything involving her mom’s care. Understandably, this was a change to her routine or a new chapter of her life that she was going to be helping her mom to deal with. It also caused her understandable stress since that because her mom doesn’t live in this state so she would need to set up here with new doctors, etc. I could tell that she was feeling stressed so I recommended that she get a notebook/journal and create a list of what she would need to do. She told me that over that weekend, what started out as a list then turned into just a flood of all the things that she was feeling about the whole situation and how it came about. She told me that it was amazing how just writing her feelings down, cleared up a lot of what was tangling up inside of her. It helped her to begin to focus on that next chapter in her life.

Realize that you need to feel all of those emotions. You need to allow them to come out, but do it in a positive manner. See a therapist or, gosh, just write them down. They are your feelings and you are entitled to them! Just promise that you won’t bury them and pretend they don’t exist. Those feelings will only fester if you don’t let them out in a positive way. Healing only comes with dealing with your emotions. Then, you too can begin that next chapter, as well.

So, what did I learn from this? It’s the reason why I write this blog. Everything that I’m feeling gets written down here. Part of it is reaching out to others and showing them that I understand and can emphasize with what they are going through, but the other reason is to show that God has played a HUGE part in me becoming the joyful person that I am today. Yes, it was difficult at the time to go to a new chapter each time. It’s only now that I can look back and see that I needed to learn something in order to get to this point. (Related post: Just going with the flow….)

What can you gain from this? There is a purpose in this journey that you are on. It’s hard to see it now. You may have to re-examine the paths that you took or even were compelled to take. God was at work there. He knows what we want before we even know what we want. He then gives us what we need so that we can be productive and happy people. Life is still about choices. It always has been and always will be. However, when you ask God for help, He will deliver you to a much better place than you were before. It’s not always easy to go through but it will always put you in a better place than you were before.