Pacing through Life

For seven months I felt like I was on a hill that just continued to climb. Never was I going to cross the crest and find the sunrise on the other side. At least, that was what my mind kept telling me. My heart really wanted that sunrise.
Not only was I living on an ever climbing hill, but it seemed like I just kept watching the sunset. Oh, don't get me wrong, a sunset is beautiful... but it's the end of the day. The end; and I, I like the beginning. of things.
Beginnings always bring something new. The sunrise brings a new day to praise. A new day to live. Story beginnings bring a new adventure; the start of a relationship bring excitement; a friendship beginning brings a chance for life. The first sip of coffee, or lick of an ice cream cone bring a smile. Just looking at beginnings we can always see something good. Something new, something alive. But what about the end?
Most of the time the end is always looked at so pessimistically. We never give it a chance to grow on us. We don't want the day to be over because we have so much to do. Or, maybe we don't want to lose that friend, or that love. Finishing a story sometimes brings tears or anger because it didn't end like we wanted it too. Too many times we try to figure out the end, or live only dreading the end because we only see what we want to see. On that hill, all I see is a sunset... an end to a day, a run, a goal, a task that I didn't get done. And because I only see that end I stress, I worry, I fill my heart with the anxiety that rules my head. Suddenly, that connection is broken. I stop pacing myself with my heart and instead pace myself through my head. All the promises of new things, of stress free things my heart tells me is gone.
My heart is my soul. My faith, my love, my blessings, my life... and my head, well, most of the time it isn't connected to my heart because it's too filled with the worldly lies satan throws at me. Though I try and strive to live through my heart, my head gets the better of me. When that chord between the two is severed, all I begin to see is the end. Just the blasted end.
Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells me that there is a time and a place for everything under the sun. That means there is a time to begin and a time to end. So when I really think about it; when I focus with my heart... a time for an end is really the beginning.
For seven months I was on a hill climbing up never thinking I would make it to the end. When all this time the end was really what I was waiting for. The end was bringing the beginning of something new. Think about it. A sunset actually brings the night. Something new. A sunset, the end of the day, brings the chance for a new one. A chance to start over, to do something more wonderful. The end of a story brings about imagination. Even the end of a relationship or a friendship beings the chance to start over, to find the one that will really fit. Endings are divine. They happen so that we may learn. They happen so that we have a chance to take another adventure in life. This time, realizing that an end is only the start of something beautiful awaiting us.
I paced myself for seven months waiting for my love's deployment to end. All this time I never saw how good the end would be. I pessimistically stereotyped the end thinking that it would never come. And when it did, that it would bring about more stress. When really,we were running towards something wonderful the whole time. The pace to the end was beautiful. I just didn't let my heart see that.
When I hugged him as he stepped off the bus this weekend, I knew the end had finally come. I had reached that hilltop. My heart took over when I realized that end was only the beginning.
If I think about life with my heart, it's so simple. It's about beginnings and ends. It's about pacing with the beat of my soul, my heart; not the pulse of my brain. There's a time for every beginning and a time for every end. But the beauty of it all, is that the end simply is only the beginning. Life comes full circle at us, all we have to do is pace.