#1 A New Beginning

From March 2020 until April 2021, I wrote a short blog of encouragement every day from Monday to Friday to the agents in my brokerage. COVID, quarantine, uncertainty and fear were in full bloom and hope was in short supply. Did you know that the word encouragement literally means to put courage into or to hearten? In 2020, that was my goal…to blow a little fresh courage into the lungs and hearts of the agents so they could go do the same for their clients, neighbors, families and community. Like many of the other firsts I experienced in 2020, writing daily was a new challenge for me. And like many other seasons in our lives, when I stepped out of my leadership role to join my brother in law in carrying on my father’s legacy in real estate, I assumed that chapter of encouragement had come to a close and laid aside my pen. 

Today as I sit viewing the fresh blanket of snow, white and fresh and deep, there is a new season beginning, a new chapter waiting to be written. Maybe it is the intoxication of January with all its newness like the smell of fresh cut wood or fresh paint or the first blank page of a journal. But I suspect it is more than that. Over the last year, I have heard so many stories about how my father impacted people’s lives. From how they learned from him the significance of birthday celebrations or his passionate defense of someone who needed it, Dad helped people with more than buying or selling their home. That kind of heart is still needed in this season where I see weariness abounding and a sort of sad acceptance that the world is a harsher place than people thought it was. So today, I pick up my pen again to continue a legacy of love, of putting fresh heart into people.  And the snow outside my window this cold winter’s day? The way I see it, the snow is a promise. A promise that there will be water for our flowers in the spring. It looks like a storehouse of HOPE on each branch. Take heart, something beautiful is coming.