We normally think about New Beginnings with the ringing in of New Years Eve, but yesterday seemed to have that same feeling for my wife and I. A few weeks ago, I mentioned a post about titled “I Promise“. That day lead to conversations about church, life and everything that we needed for a new life, conversations that my wife and I had been having for a year, but they were just that, conversations.

Yesterday, March 8th, at 11:30 a.m. we as a family, started on our journey of new beginnings. Together, we put one font in front of another and within a few minutes, the weight of the world seemed to slowly life. Pain was being replaced by joy. Tears were happy tears and not filled with pain and sorrow. In a few minutes, our family had a different outlook, a different perspective, a new beginning.  After a lot of discussion, we decided to attend a church that was close to the house. Neither my wife nor myself had any idea what was going to happen when we walked through the doors, but what happened was nothing short of a miracle. Heck, the entire day was nothing short of a miracle.

As we walked through the doors of the church, we were immediately greeted and shown where to go to drop the boys off for children’s church. As we walked up, Baby A wanted nothing to do with going in, but Baby B was ready to go. He immediately introduced himself, his brother, my wife and myself and off he went to play. Within just a few minutes, they were both playing and having fun. As my wife and I made our way into the sanctuary, there was a feeling of calm and peace that I think that both my wife and I have been searching for, but had not found.  As we got situated in our seats, I looked over during the first song and my wife had tears in her eyes and for the first time in a long time, she had tears of joy and not sorrow. This was our first step on our journey of our families new beginnings.

After we picked up the boys from children’s church, they were so excited to have met new friends and played, that we took the boys for donuts, but who doesn’t love donuts?  We talked and we laughed over sprinkle donuts, as my wife and I held hands and laughed and enjoyed our coffee. Healing was beginning to take place over donuts. We were out and having fun together and we had just had a great experience at church and those new beginnings, started their at church.

We ran a few quick errands and then went home and opened the doors and started clearing out the kitchen and before we new it, we had completely thrown out all of the old stuff that we weren’t using. De-cluttering of the kitchen felt amazing!  My wife and I both felt that this was the start to our downsize and preparation for a future move. (It is easier to downsize when you don’t’ have to get out of a house quickly, than it is to be stressed and only have a few weeks.)  But we even got the boys to help get some of their toys in order too. As we worked through the kitchen, we planned our next weekend project and we are going to go room by room or section by section to really get things paired down in the house. We have a lot of stuff, things that we rarely even use.

As the day went on and we worked and we played, Baby A asked if we could go out and grill something, he is definitely my kid. So, off we went, just the two of us as his brother played inside with my wife. My son and I talked about life, listened to bluegrass and Texas Red Dirt music and we laughed. We really laughed a lot. I think that we laughed to the point that I cried, cried tears of joy though. And after we were finished and it was time for bed, it was just my wife and I. We sat on the sofa and talked about the new beginnings that we had experienced and how it was almost a perfect day. I asked what effected her the most about church and she did not want to talk about it, other than she was so happy that I had suggested that we go.

I don’t know what today will bring, let alone tomorrow, but today, right now, we celebrated the new beginnings and are looking forward to the future.