So(ul)journ!

I love John O’Donohue—an Irish writer, but mostly a poet, who died suddenly and far too young. His writing carries a wisdom beyond his years, and his poem For a New Beginning feels especially on point as I lean toward retirement. Perhaps not just retirement, though—but any new beginning.

For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue

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,
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 this 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.

Jacki’s bold decision to relocate to Barahona a year ago this January was one such threshold. It was a season filled with questions. And now, upon her return home, her missionary year complete, we can look back and see how so much fell into place: new relationships formed, support emerged from good friends, and another notch was added to her adventure belt of life.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a similar moment—when the old passes away. A move to a new location. The completion of school (or even an incomplete year). A career change. A relationship once tender that has ended—whether through regret, distance, or death.

New beginnings are rarely understood in the moment. They are lived first, and only later recognized. Looking back often reassures us of many things, but perhaps foremost of this: what we feared most often became the very thing that moved us in the direction we needed to go. The journey may not have unfolded as we expected, or it may have turned out just as we hoped. Either way, we find ourselves once again on the cusp of something new. Fear gives way—slowly—to anticipation.

I never fully understood my wife’s fascination with planning “the next thing.” We’d be in the thick of one trip, and she’d already be asking about the next, months down the road. My father used to tell a story about traveling with his family, when his own father—after finishing breakfast—would ask what the dinner plans were that evening. People would chuckle, but he was serious.

Settling in and enjoying the present moment matters. But having something to look forward to nurtures hope—the quiet confidence that there will always be a “next.”

There is much to be said for that invitation: to breathe into a new opportunity, to trust the promise of the opening before us, to unfurl ourselves into what is emerging.

May our spirits awaken to the adventure