Onward

Our house is officially on the market.  We've had a several showings over the last two weeks and I am more than anxious to progress to the next step.  I don't know when a buyer will come along, but that was the whole purpose of getting the house on the market early, to give us time before life in Rochester begins. 

I don't know how to say goodbye.  I've never been very good at it.  I don't know how to tie up loose ends with relationships that will forever be altered by distance.  It was difficult to paint over the growth chart Lee and I started for Jeremiah on the kitchen doorframe. Transferring that information over to paper seemed......well, less somehow.  But life happens.  Change is unavoidable.  There is only so much that we can pack up and take with us.

So how do you pack up and take along relationships?  Given, the age of social networking has enabled them to continue or re-engage, but what about old-fashioned living life together kind of relationships?  Wanting desperately to maintain what once was doesn't necessarily mean that's the healthy, natural progression of them.  Almost seven years in Duluth has given us TONS of memories, great friendships, many 'firsts' in our life.  It's the longest we've ever spent in one place and even though we've moved several times in our marriage, I feel like I'm learning how to leave and say goodbye all over again.  It is not my strength but I want to do it well. 

The storm seemed to have passed rather quickly; the ability to hold on, hunker down and wait for signs of calm is getting easier and easier. 

In hindsight I cannot minimize or discredit my hopes- they were pure, honest and real.  In hindsight I cannot take hopes unfulfilled and toss them.  I do not know what from my past means for my future but this one thing:  I will continue to stand, and if I fall it will not be for long.  I get no other say in the matter but that.  I do not get to say when this is done, I do not get to change what has already happened- the only shot I call is whether or not to keep standing.

I could not stop the onslought of memories that brought me back to kneeling on the bathroom floor, arms protectively wrapped around my womb, begging God to spare the life of my baby; the sound of my dad sobbing on the phone when I called to tell him the baby was gone; cleaning off my miscarried baby and sending it to heaven with this blessing-
Go rest with Jesus, my darling....

The waves of absolute brokenness come without warning at times.  I will not seek for truth in those moments- I will let them ride out, determined that they will not wash me away.  I will cling to the knowledge that it breaks, the tide of pain breaks, if but only for a while, and then there is rest.

I cannot stop those moments, but I will let them pass and they will not damage me.

It is true that I will be saddened and grieved about the pain of life.  This world is full of it, but if I cannot move beyond it, if I cannot recall the pain without being brought right back to the moment of injury and getting stuck there, then what victory have I really allowed Christ to have in my life? 

I will not leash the power of God.  Not for one minute.