Picking Up The Bookmark And Turning The Page

Turning the page on pretty much anything  in life can be challenging under even the best of circumstances — but starting fresh (or simply starting over) gets especially difficult when it feels like external factors like seasons, and weather, and life relationships don’t want to cooperate. 

Technically, it’s been Spring for weeks, but New England weather moves at its own pace, paying no mind to trifling things like months, calendars, or equinoxes. In fact, early Spring here looks and feels a whole lot like more Winter, only with a little more daylight. 

Like so many other things in my life that I want to nudge, to hasten, to speed along, here in New Hampshire, Spring comes when it’s ready — and not a moment sooner. 

So after almost four weeks of waiting anxiously, Spring finally graced us with her presence, coming out in full force. Blue skies, singing birds, rising temperatures — all of it. 

As soon as it happened, we New Englanders did the very thing we always do the very moment it breaks 60 outside. We sprang into action, clearing our closets of anything remotely resembling a winter garment to make room for our entire warm-weather wardrobe. 

We positively revel in the age-old tradition of prematurely packing away our sweaters and boots, knowing full well that the temperatures, as temperatures do in New England, will inevitably plummet, and we’ll all be flip-flopping our way through an arctic tundra at any given moment. 

Still, the Changing of the Garments is a positively glorious rite of passage in every New England household. Why? Because it fills us with hope and reminds us that, no matter the circumstances, events, or frigid temperatures, we can always exercise the power of choice to keep moving forward to something new after a long, dark, cold season. 

It helps us turn the page on Winter and allows us to start crafting fresh, new, warmer Spring stories. 

Are You Ready to Start Turning The Page On a Tough Life Season?

This time of year always makes me think of my dear friend Kristin who once said, “We all have tough chapters in our story — but we don’t have to leave our bookmark there.” It reminds me that some long, dark, cold seasons have nothing to do with Mother Nature but can still leave us desperate to take out the bookmark, pick up the pen, and begin writing entirely new chapters in our lives after a stretch marked with struggle.

We all have those tough chapters. We all have those seasons, those pages in our book marked with: 

Obstacles and overwhelm.
Hurt and disappointment.
Grief and uncertainty. 

Some tough chapters are completely out of our control — written entirely by the families we’re born into because we’re still far too young to hold our own pens. 

And even when we can start narrating our own stories, we can still find ourselves mired in tough life chapters. 

Some tough chapters are written by the toxic relationships in our adult lives — where we are relegated to sidekicks, supporting characters, and mere afterthoughts to trick us into telling the story solely from their point of view. 

Some tough chapters write themselves as we navigate stretches of loss and pain toward a deeper understanding of this hard but beautiful truth: 

It is virtually impossible to live an authentic life, nurture meaningful relationships, and embrace a fully human experience without those stretches of struggle that often feel like they will never end. 

But then, they do — they end. 

The clouds clear, the storms subside, and the dawn breaks, bringing with it the power to decide what comes next in our story. 

We may spend far longer than we expected (or even wanted to) on the painful pages in our lives — but it’s never too late to pick up the bookmark. 

It’s never too late to pick up our pens to write entirely new chapters in our story that help us move forward with our relationships, development, growth, forgiveness, healing, or peace. 

Here’s to a Spring full of fresh, new pages waiting to be filled with hope, with joy, with love, with freedom, with big, bold, beautiful dreams, and with every color of adventure. 

A season of spring cleaning where we get rid of old, outdated tales we’ve believed for far too long to discover new truths and tell new stories about ourselves.

TODAY’S SOFT NEVER

Let’s put a Soft Never on believing we can never  empower ourselves to pickup the bookmark in our own lives and move on to fresh chapters in our lives. It’s always okay to turn the page and see what life has waiting next for us.