“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
We are all witnesses to the seasons changing right now and another year winding to its close. And as the leaves fall and the winds shift to a more melancholy and chilly demeanor, we are often hit with so many ill-fitting thoughts. So, here is a new one – leave.
I’m not talking about getting in the car and shirking responsibilities. I mean change. Get out of the rut. Do a new thing.
“I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
The book that these quotes come from today are one that I read years ago and they changed my life forever. In fact, my heart and soul completely shifted at just the foreword, which is listed below. I was stuck in a job where my heart had become stagnant. This was a profession I felt was my calling in life. So, when it became a chore to go to, my heart was shattered and a feeling of incomprehensible dread filled every step of my life. I desperately needed to break the cycle of monotony to which I had grown accustomed. I needed someone to shake me and tell me it was okay for me to leave. And when I did, it set things in motion in my life and within me that changed me forever.
“And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
Where is your comfort zone not being stretched? What parts of your life have become stagnant? The season of change is here. the season of leave is upon us. What step will you take? Do you need a push?
Okay, leave. Move. Step out. Speak up. It all begins here. You are only leaving behind the dead parts of you. The new begins with that first step.