Today is the first day of the rest of my life

I woke up early this morning. I wanted to transfer all my belongings to my new place by noon. And I would’ve wanted to accomplish it without a trace, without a sound but that was beyond all possibilities. The “logistics”, however, went well. I also got to donate the clothes that I no longer use to Red Cross, which is good.

Still, my ears are saturated by that bittersweet song. I hear it despite the heavy rain, as if that song plays not from without but from within.

But “bittersweet” is a lovely oxymoron. I recall Naomi and Ruth on their way to Bethlehem. Naomi lost all that she had. To her that journey was a succumbing to her fate. “Don’t call me Naomi,” she said “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.” Ruth, however, was looking forward to better things and she insisted on following her mother-in-law. “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God,” she told her.

I feel like I am both Naomi and Ruth. It’s as if a fragment of me has died and I am drifting along the river of the inevitable and yet like Ruth, I know that something wonderful lies ahead. In the end, everything lies in God’s hands.