Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. –Isaiah 43:19

Though it’s been spring for a few weeks, the warmer weather here in San Diego over the last two weeks seems to have kicked off the start of a new season. A shifting from the heavy rains of this winter to the warm sunshine we all moved here for.

This week also marks the one year anniversary of this blog. It’s been 51 weeks of exposing my thoughts and feelings about my life and the world around us. I look back on the past year and marvel at how much as changed, from new, steady client work to new wheels. From new friends to new countries traveled to. From revelations about my still-healing heart to the ongoing process of healing itself.

Through it all, I am reminded that life is a series of deaths and rebirths. It’s constant. Sometimes, the deaths are necessary – dying to my own ego, killing lies that I believed, letting go of things that didn’t serve me. And other deaths are harder – the passing of a loved one, the betrayal of my body as I age, the releasing of a relationship.

But I see now that everything is being made new all the time, if we stop to notice.

When things have seem lifeless, beyond help, or hopeless, I remember there is new life waiting for me on the other side. Like the first days of spring after a long winter, I start to recognize the signs of new sprigs and buds peeking out.

So here’s to the bloom that comes after the rain and sometimes in the middle of the desert. And another season of attempting to love big, live wisely, and learn well.

[Photo: the Bougainvillea blooming at my front gate]