I’ve started over more than once.
And I don’t know if starting over ever feels particularly good.
There’s something about looking at something you built, worked for, got comfortable in, or thought would be part of your life for a long time and realizing, well…
Here we go again.
I think that’s one of the reasons starting over can feel so discouraging.
It looks like zero.
New beginning. New chapter. New plan. New whatever.
And when you’re looking at everything that has to be rebuilt, it’s easy to feel like everything that came before it was wasted.
I’ve thought that about years of my life.
I’ve thought it about decisions I’ve made.
I’ve looked back and wondered where I would be if I had done this differently, started that sooner, stayed with something longer, or walked away from something earlier.
There are a lot of ways to rewrite your life when you’re looking backward.
The problem is, none of those versions actually happened.
This one did.
And lately I’ve been realizing that every time I’ve had to start again, I didn’t actually start from nothing.
I brought myself with me.
Not the same version of myself who started the last time either.
I brought what I learned.
I brought experience.
I brought some wisdom I definitely did not have before.
I brought a few lessons I probably could have learned the easier way, but apparently we didn’t choose that option. 😂
I even brought the things that didn’t work, because now I know something I didn’t know before.
That’s not nothing.
There’s a verse in Joel that I’ve heard preached plenty of times:
“And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten…”
Joel 2:25, KJV
For a long time, I think I heard restoration and imagined God somehow giving me back what I lost exactly as it was.
The years. The opportunities. The time.
But I can’t be 25 again.
And I’m not sure I would want to be.
Okay, I’m lying. I wouldn’t mind having 25-year-old knees again.
But I don’t want her mind back.
I know things now.
I’ve lived some things now.
I’ve learned God in ways I hadn’t learned Him then.
So maybe restoration doesn’t always mean God makes it as though the years never happened.
Maybe He can do something with what happened in them.
I’m still thinking through what that looks like in my own life.
There are things I’m rebuilding now. There are things I’m beginning again. And yes, sometimes I look at where I am and think I should be further along.
But then I have to remind myself:
This isn’t the beginning of my story.
It’s just the beginning of this part.
I didn’t come here empty-handed.
So yes, I’m starting over in some ways.
But I’m not starting from nothing.