Endings and Beginnings…we all have them. Like when we graduated from one school and prepared for the next adventure – more schooling, a new career, marriage…travel! We remember significant transitions like when we went from being single to being a couple, or vice versa; when we sold our first house and bought a new one; when we left one job and began another. Events mark significant moments in our lives like bookends. It is what happens in the “and” place – that in-between space – that I reflect on now.
I’m thinking about this because I find myself in that space now and, as my daughter graduates from high school and prepares to leave for college, I’m asking myself, “What’s next?”
Being in this and space elicits a whirlpool of feelings – a somber completion, a joyful relief, an eager unknowingness, a confident fear, a buoyant happiness…. What has been our life, what has been so familiar for the past ump-teen days and years, is changing. It is a good feeling for some; a “now-what?” feeling for others. Perhaps, it is really some of both.
Gernot Candolini, an Austrian author on and designer of labyrinths, described that space as the place between God’s finger and Adam’s in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.
It’s what we do with the gift of that space that matters. Do we pause to reflect or stay stuck? Do we plow forward or mosey meaningfully along? It’s the next first step that matters. Candolini writes, “In every first step lies a special feeling, the magic of beginning.”
That next first step in the and spaces of your life is filled with power and potential. May you be blessed by its magic, reflective of its gifts, and mindful of God’s presence in the space between endings and beginnings.
