I’ve never been good at goodbyes. I blubber and cry. We’re talking tears, hives and uncommon amounts of dripping. Or I avoid it altogether. You know, the turtle and the shell variety. Ugly either way you look at it.

The past few years of my life have been marked by endings. Highschool graduations. Selling our ten-year family car. Adding more children. Saying goodbye to empty nest before it even began. Changes in family, in schedule, career, expectations, dreams. Endings, endings, endings.

But I no longer think of changes and endings as devastating. Painful at time, yes. But not without potential.

Yesterday, Faithlife Women featured a story I wrote about my family’s move from Arizona to Illinois when I was a little girl. I hated it. Cried for days. But now, 35 years past those first 6, I see that move as one of the best things that ever happened to me. Sometimes all a painful ending needs is the perspective of a different vantage point:

“I was not quite seven years old when my family moved from Tempe, Arizona to Bloomington, Illinois.

I still remember hiding myself in the living room drapes, peeking out every now and then to glare at the movers as they emptied our home of everything familiar. I watched, indignant and despairing, as if these men were thieves rather than employees doing a job.

The next day, our family pulled out of the driveway for the last time, leaving behind my Holly Hobby bedroom, my first best friend, and the front yard willow tree underneath which I had discovered the magic of imagination. Within a week, the moving van met us in another state to deliver all our belongings to our new home. And although the belongings were the same, somehow my 6-year-old self knew I would never be. Life as I knew it came to an abrupt end …” [Keep Reading]

Take a honest look at your life, today. What needs to end so you can enjoy a beautiful new beginning?