As the fog tumbled slowly down our lane, I felt a quiet awakening of spirit and an inward song left too long unsung.

The egregious years of reckoning sank solemnly upon our heads and hearts as we struggled to find the real behind the curtain. A dance of knowingness blended with immeasurable pain mired our days with a sense of loss and despair.

For four long years.

We held our breath.

We said our prayers.

We trembled in the rhythm of promising rectitude.

We never gave up. We showed up instead.

And deep down, in the marrow of our bones, we knew this day would come.

After walking for miles with a friend on an impossibly sunny autumn afternoon last Saturday, I returned to my home with the familiar wanting of hope mixed with trained tenuousness.

Flipping on CNN’s live stream, I fought with my home-made emotion of wishing and desire.

“Please, dear God. Just this once. Can you feed me an answered prayer?”

Minutes later, the collective call of I-dare-say-billions was heard. The Earth shuddered. The internal black clouds fled to the hell from whence they came. A massive, deep exhalation could be heard around the planet’s girth.

“Joe Biden has been named President-elect of the United States of America.”

I shouted. I cried. I leapt from the bed where my laptop lay, grabbing it with a seriousness reserved for life-and-death matters. I called out to my 21-year-old daughter who was quietly working in a neighboring room.

“Look, look, look!” I cried. I placed the laptop down on her bed to show her the dream that had turned into reality.

She shouted. She jumped. She looked at me straight on. I saw her future there, nestled deeply in the pool of her beautiful eyes. I felt the entire world in that room, whispering a statement of gratitude and hope and promise.

In that moment, I knew that the pang of living was worth it. If not for anything else, but for that minute in time.

To the toils of our lives. To the lessons we must learn. To the mistake we must never repeat. To the evolution of our everything.

It is time for renewal. And forgiveness. And moving forward.

Let us begin again. I am willing to take your hand on this journey – no matter what you have done in the past if you have the willingness to set the future right. Together.