Beginning Life
By Susan Vaughan Shumake
February 24, 2020
At the end of every chapter, there is a new beginning. The pages of our past are not gone. They are just behind us faithfully telling our story. Each season of suffering leads us to a new pinnacle of faith as we ride this journey called life.
Life is a gift, but life is hard. Fighting for life is exhausting. There is no easy way to get through it. We just do the best we can to make it through the day, every day.
Each day is a fight for survival. Some days we fight with ourselves. Some days we fight with those around us. Some days we fight with God. But every day we fight for life! We are called ‘Survivors’, but we don’t feel like survivors until our fight is finished. We survive because of something greater than ourselves. The love of God sustains us.
We learn to hate this enemy that tries to steal our lives! There are times we become raw with emotion, raw from the physical pain of our sutured wounds or of the debilitating affects of a disease or disability on life itself. Our wounds, the incisions to cut out the cancer, or to repair the brokenness after an injury, or to rescue us from our own failing bodies, cut more deeply than our flesh. They cut into the image of who we are. Our womanhood. Our manhood. Our personhood. Our God created self. We fight to save all these things.
Here, in this chapter, in the deepest places of our soul, we find how lonely we are. Or should I say, how alone we are. No one can fight this battle for us. We learn to be alone. We learn to be alone with God. We need more deeply. We love more intensely. We hold onto things with a grip that won’t let go, because if we lose our grip, they may slip…away.
We feel insecure, because our security has been shaken. Our lives have been threatened. Our plans have been taken. We feel insecure about being in this new place without treatment or pain, or the people that surrounded us for so long, because they became our life. We feel insecure, but we are stronger!
I am beginning again. I am beginning life all over again at the end of a very long journey that changed me. I am beginning again, as a beginner. I look different. I feel different. I am different.
I am BEGINNING LIFE with a greater passion for life. I am beginning life with a greater compassion and love for others. I am beginning life with a greater faith in the love of God my Father. I am beginning life with a new sense of purpose to follow His plan for my life. I am beginning life feeling loved!
Sincerely, Susan
