The God Who Helps Us Begin Again
I had a specific plan for my Wednesday afternoon.
Pick up my kids from school. Take one child to basketball practice. Drop off the other child at a friend’s house. Get gas, pick up the kids and go home.
My margin was small. I had very little time to squeeze anything additional into my day … and then the unexpected happened.
I had a car accident!
So many factors influenced my emotions at that moment. The accident was my fault. It came at a difficult financial time for my family. I still needed gas. The clock was ticking. This was not supposed to be a part of my Wednesday.
This unplanned mishap caused all of my most recent blunders to resurface in my mind and join forces against me. Soon, I found myself spiraling into a deep well of discouragement. This was another thing I did not have time for.
After the truck I slid into drove off, I went to a grocery store parking lot, rested my head on my steering wheel and sobbed. It was simultaneously a cry for mercy — in what felt like a long season of difficulty — and a cry for help.
Everything in me felt stuck, reliving the moment just before the accident. Thoughts that did not change my circumstance swirled around my brain. If I had just slowed down in the intersection, I could have avoided this catastrophe. This is a complete disaster. I wish it hadn’t happened.
None of these thoughts were productive, nor were they capable of changing the reality of my accident.
Sometimes life makes us feel stuck or too messed up to begin again.
Broken relationships appear irreparable.
Life’s failures seem insurmountable.
Unexpected mistakes feel overwhelming.
When we find ourselves in this place, we can remind ourselves of the truth found in God’s Word: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
