Learning to Walk Again

I thought tomorrow was about going back to work.

It isn't.

It is about learning how to walk again.

Tomorrow I will walk through the same entrance, greet the same people, and sit at the same desk. From a distance, it may look as though nothing has changed.

But the traveller has.

Journeys do not always need new landscapes to begin. Sometimes they begin because the traveller changes.

Then I noticed something unexpected.

I was no longer trying to understand what had happened.

I was trying to understand who I was becoming because it had happened.

That is a different kind of question altogether.

After a difficult moment, there is a temptation to reconstruct the past. To replay conversations, search for missed signals, defend intentions, and wonder whether one moment has rewritten an entire story.

Then another thought found me.

Israel crossed the Jordan only once.

Their first step into Canaan was not a cautious experiment to see if the water was safe.

It was the beginning of a chapter they could never walk back from.

Perhaps tomorrow is the same.

Not a test.

A beginning.

Love has taught me something similar.

We often imagine that loving well always means reaching further, holding tighter, staying longer.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes loving well means stepping back.

Neither diminishes love when both are guided by wisdom.

The measure of love is not always proximity.

Sometimes it is honour.

As I think about tomorrow now, I find that I am no longer wondering what the day will bring.

I am wondering how I will walk into it.

Every meaningful journey in my life has begun quietly.

No crowds waited.

No applause announced a new chapter.

Only a simple decision to keep walking.

Perhaps that is why Scripture so often speaks of walking with God.

Not because every path is easy, but because every faithful step shapes the traveller before it changes the landscape.

Tomorrow I am not returning to yesterday.

I am taking the first quiet step into a journey I did not expect, trusting that the God who has walked with me through every previous chapter is already waiting for me in this one.

The Nugget

A change of scenery rarely marks the beginning of a new journey. More often, it is marked by a change in the traveller. Faith is simply having the courage to take the next step before the whole road comes into view.