Fresh Starts

Fresh Starts

As summer is starting to come to a close, I am looking back on the amazing time I had in Santa Cruz and all of the wonderful people I met and all the amazing things God did in my life, but I am also being rather abruptly confronted with this new school year – new classes and new people to meet. Coming back from a summer in which I changed so much everything seems new, and it reminds me of a conversation a friend and I had about fresh starts.

Sometimes all you want is a fresh start. Maybe it’s to start over in a new place where no one knows you and you can recreate yourself into who you want to be. Maybe it’s just a do over to change something that has happened that seems to have changed everything else about your life. Maybe it’s new beginning to a relationship or avoiding it entirely. Whatever it is, we all seem to be naturally drawn to the idea of a fresh start.

We all sometimes just want to step away or step back and begin again. I think it’s partly because things in this world often don’t want to let us go, and things of this world are heavy. We walk through this life collecting memories and relationships and guilt and reputations and beliefs and disappointments and regrets. They grab hold of us and don’t want to let go. We try to shake them and ditch them and if nothing else ignore them, but we can’t seem to lose them. Eventually we just want to collapse from the sheer weight of it all. I feel like that’s why people are so attracted to fresh starts; they are just tired – tired of bearing all their baggage and burdens. They just want someone to take it off for a while so they can start walking again. That’s why fresh starts are so appealing; you aren’t carrying the weight of your steps yet.

That’s the situation I find myself in often – so tired of carrying all of life’s baggage. I just long to have it lifted off. I just long to be redeemed.

And that’s why I am so thankful for Christ. He is so quick and willing to bear it all for me. No situation is too large, no guilt too heavy for the arms of the Savior. A life with Christ promises a fresh start each day. I may not be able to change my situations, but in Christ I am able to enter into it new- a new person and new creation. And I am so thankful. I am able not only to be washed clean but made new. As I walk on hard pressed from the weight of this life, I am able to surrender that to someone far stronger and far more capable of bearing the load. Even as I find myself there now again wishing for a new start, I am thankful for a God strong enough to carry me and loving enough to redeem me.