::Beginnings and Endings::

Beginnings are sometimes hard to wrap our brains around. 

A baby’s last push into this world, that would be seen as an ending — of life inside her mother’s womb — and yet, that first gulp of air is the breath of Spirit; a beginning infusion which, repeated throughout her life, will sustain her, until she draws her last.

What happens then? Some say they know; have crossed over and come back. Who am I to question them? I can only wonder, hope, and believe.

I’m wondering this morning if life itself isn’t one long, dramatic birth canal that carries us to places we’ve only read about, dreamt of, and imagined. 

My mother is 96. She lies in her bed … old, frail, a mere shadow of the woman she’s been. She’s unresponsive, for the most part, and time is growing short. Soon, she will be gone.

But on that other side I see her emerging, young and beautiful, running into the arms of my Daddy, who passed four years ago. Truth is, I believe that, in many ways, she is with him now.

Beginnings — endings. The circle of life. All of it a painful, and wondrous, and a miraculous journey.

What the caterpillar knows as an ending, is the beginning to the butterfly.