understand that their transition to Orthodoxy represents a complete break with their past. Yet I am who I am and my journey is also is marked through time and part of what brought me to this beautiful path. Each place I have been has been a step along the way, each mistake a part of the larger fabric, and each blessing continues. If I were to erase any of it I would cease to be me even as I daily struggle to be something higher, better, and more godly.
The last little while has been tiring for me, and I can see it in my face and feel it in my body as each day takes another step closer to home. In these sometimes lean, dry, times though the places where I have been reach forward from my past to help me along the way. Witness this beautiful hymn we sang in the days when I was an earnest Protestant.
So much has changed in my life yet these beautiful thoughts, a part of the journey past, have come back to give me strength in the presnt. If I had not been in that place in those days this blessing would have eluded me in the present. To be Orthodox is not so much rejecting e erything that has gone before as it is to take the best of that journey with you, learn from the rough spots, and continue on along the beautiful path cherishing each good thing as a gift from the Giver, evidence of the grace that has never let you go.
The Beautiful Path 