re-reading my favorite book...

"Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road" by Donald Miller

"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, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."

(emphasis mine)

i cannot tell you the number of times i have read this book over the past three years. countless. and each time, the above paragraph has resonated with me and touched something deep inside of me. today is no different than those other times, except that today i interpret it differently.

these excerpts are from the author's note. nowhere near the meat of the book, it's not even the beginning. when you have to pause and reflect before you even truly begin, you know what lies ahead will be great. and so, once more i embark upon the journey that is this book...

"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 at 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."