Field Notes on Starting Over: Note #8—Blessings

Words of wisdom for crossing thresholds and navigating transitions

Back in October, as I was traveling around Ireland, I stumbled upon a gem of a book in a small, independent used bookshop in Derry.

The book jacket of To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue, claimed that inside it I would find insights on a plethora of life’s thresholds. Being in transition myself, I felt this book had found me at just the right time (as books magically tend to do).

Over the next few months, I read one poem/blessing a day and noted passages that particularly resonated or made me view things with new eyes. What follows is some of those gleanings. I hope they give you the same comfort they have given me.

🙏 “In out of the way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.”

What moved me most about this blessing is the idea that beginnings don’t start when we finally act—they’ve been brewing all along. The poem goes on to describe how we can sense this inner restlessness long before we’re willing to leave the familiar, how we linger in safety even as something in us quietly grows empty.

Reading this while in the midst of my own transition, I felt a sense of relief. There was no urgency or judgment for staying too long. Just the reassurance that courage has its own timing—and that when it does arrive, it doesn’t mean everything is suddenly clear. It simply means we’re willing to step onto new ground and trust that the path will reveal itself as we walk.

🙏 “There should always be a healthy tension between the life we have settled for and the desires that still call us. In this sense our desires are the messengers of our unlived life, calling us to attention and action while we still have time here to explore fields where the treasure dwells!”

Rather than urging us to abandon the lives we’ve built, this passage suggests that longing can coexist with gratitude, that it can function as a quiet messenger pointing toward what remains unexplored.

What resonates most for me is the urgency without panic. There’s an insistence here, but it’s a gentle one: while we still have time. The blessing doesn’t promise that following these desires will be easy or even immediately rewarding. It simply reminds us that paying attention matters—that there are still fields we haven’t walked into yet, and that ignoring the call altogether is its own kind of loss.

🙏 “May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.”

How many of us have settled for safety and comfort—or at least “the devil we know” rather than pursue our desires or an unknown path? This poem continues by challenging the reader to enter into our own unease in order to discover the new directions our longings may take us.

In later passages, O’Donohue returns to this idea by acknowledging how difficult change can be. Even when we want it—when we long to release old limitations, loosen ingrained patterns, or finally choose happiness over quiet discontent—we often cling to what’s familiar. We hold onto these patterns like a kind of security blanket, preferring their predictability over what he calls the “danger of difference.” That phrase stayed with me. I’ve realized how often I’ve acted out of fear of change at the very moments when change was exactly what I was craving.

🙏 “May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died”

Reading this reminded me that staying put can sometimes cost more than moving on, that what we are leaving behind is often something we’ve already outgrown or may have never fit us in the first place.

🙏 “Often what alarms us as an ending can in fact be the opening of a new journey—a new beginning that we could never have anticipated; one that engages forgotten parts of the heart.”

This has certainly been the case in my life: a breakup that led to a rich decade of travel and living abroad; job loss that led to a creative project and reawakening of my love of writing. Endings that, in the moment, felt unbearable cleared paths to places I never would have thought to venture.

What this passage shows us is how limited our imagination can be when in the middle of something falling apart. Sometimes endings look more like conclusions rather than thresholds. Yet loss can also be seen as an invitation—one that asks us to walk forward without knowing where we’re headed, and to trust that something in us will come alive along the way.

I highly recommend reading this book of blessings to guide you through whatever threshold you find yourself crossing at this point in your life. You can find both the physical copy as well, as the e-book, on my affiliate site at bookshop.org.