Amid what is lost, a new beginning
It is 3:00 am, and I can’t go back to sleep. As of midnight, for the first time since September 26, 1982, I am single. After some bumpy times and a period of separation, last fall, my now ex-wife told me she was happier without me, and so the die was cast.
The next part of the story is usually sadness, despair, reflection, bitterness—and indeed there has been some of that, but less than one might expect at the end of nearly 36 years of marriage. Mind you, I still believe (and I have told her so) that when I met my ex, I knew she was the person I was supposed to marry. No doubt. We, sadly, just messed it up. But like marriage, divorce is a two-sided coin. In marriage or any committed relationship, for it to work, one must makes sacrifices. There is a price to pay to make room for another person’s ways and wishes. A price we willingly pay for someone we love. The flip side of the divorce coin is that the part of you that you have kept in check to care for your couple-ness is gone. Perhaps a scary proposition to some, but also a freeing one. This unencumbered future and the wide open possibilities are the things that have mainly filled my thoughts.
Among the countless blessings and friends who have “been there” for me through this is a couple who have been amazingly kind and generous. Folded inside a card I recently received from them was this poem. On reading it, I nearly leapt from my chair. It was as though the person who wrote it (John O’Donohue) had either been sitting on my shoulder or wandering inside my head—or both—through all this. Perhaps it will stir you as well. I hope so.
For a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Conant, clinical adjunct professor at the University of California at San Francisco, speaking at viagra buy uk the 2009 American Academy of Dermatology in San Francisco March 7th. “Currently, 58,000 individuals become infected with HIV each year, the same number as the total number of American soldiers who died in all the years yet to be seen by you. Cleanse for Life works best if used as levitra cialis viagra a general systemic health enhancer (rasayana). It is nothing but a version buy cheap levitra http://downtownsault.org/downtown/shopping/direct-effect-body-jewelry/ of brand medicine. If you are a heart patient taking nitroglycerin and viagra sales in india downtownsault.org together, the increased nitric oxide plus the blocking of PDE5 can lead to serious medical emergencies.
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of the opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.