Starting over can be a gift if we decide it is

​I had dinner with my friend Stacy last night. If I had to offer a theme for our conversation it would be, Starting Over.

It was helpful talking to a friend who is traveling a similar 'starting over' journey in life to the one I'm traveling. Starting over in our health and fitness endeavors and in our relationships and in our jobs. We reflected on the last several years of our lives, and how it can get to feeling like we're caught up in a river of starting overs.

The good thing about having dinner with this friend is she's further down that river than I am in many ways. She's tackled a lot of her own starting overs and found hope and new life downstream. And so when she looks at my starting overs and says I'm doing good, that means something to me.

Because the reality is if we ever want to get really good at something, starting over might be one of the best things to get good at. One way or another, we can't avoid it, it's what we're all doing, every day - starting over.

Sometimes the starting over is relatively small, the old car finally clunked out yesterday, time to get a new one.

Sometimes the starting over is relatively giant, I was married 22 years and now I'm not.

The magnitudes are certainly different, but the questions we need to ask ourselves are not.

What's my next step, and do I have the courage to take it?

I am grateful that in going downstream of my giant starting over journey I've discovered friends who look like courage. They look like courage in their lives and they looking like courage knocking at the door of my life.

They look like friends who will allow you to feel safe enough to say this river is full of boulders, and I feel like my head is crashing against every one of them some days. And they will say, maybe, but you're still moving downstream.

I know a lot of friends who are in starting over journeys. And believe me when I say, I know that can feel much more like a curse than a gift.

It will feel that way until you jump in the river and float away and watch the curse grow smaller in the rearview mirror as you head downstream.

It will feel that way until you have a friend who assures you you're doing good.

It will feel that way until you decide I've come this far, I might as well keep going.

Keep going and accept the gift of starting over. The day does come when we don't get to accept that gift anymore.

Accept it while you can.