My Sweetness brought home big boxes of stuff this week. This is the time at the end of each job that I know that it is really about to be over. Usually when he unloads boxes from his truck and brings in the contents from his office I am boxing everything up too so it isn't so out of place. This time it seems weird, like he's getting ready to move but the rest of us aren't. I guess that is exactly what is happening I'm just not able to process it yet. Every time he brings in the contents of his office I get a small glimpse into his daily life. I always want to replace his pictures of the kids and marvel at how much they have grown since the last move, but now where in the world will those pictures hang next?
I think Sweetness and the rest of PCL will be done here in Macon with in the next three weeks or so. We have been given no word, no instructions and only have our best guess to plan around. I like to think this situation would unhinge even the most stable of people. Every move we have made together has been full of uncertainty, I'm trying to remind myself of that. We are usually packing up while still not knowing where we will be moving, but at least having two or three cities of possibility.
Right now we are not packing and going on as if we still live here. Let me explain: Turner started baseball last night. Why on earth would we have signed him up if we know we are done here in Macon? Well the kids and I aren't done here it seems. I have not "broken up" with Macon. This is my silly way of explaining the complex emotional process of letting go of a place that up to this point I have fought to make feel like my home. It's a process, it creeps up slowly. The last day of summer I said goodbye to going to the pool, knowing I would never see it again. It's little things that people mention, "Next year we'll do this again..." about BB Q's, summer camps, get togethers, that I just smile and nod but inside I know we won't be here for. I've been in the process of breaking up for a while now. I have to do it to be at peace, and now Macon and I making up. I am going to drive through the clouds of cherry blossoms again, I think my kids will get to swim with their friends for one more summer, I'm being tantalized with keeping most of what is wonderful about living here. But what about my Sweetness? What about my best friend and her daughters who I love like my family?
My friend Dana gave me a life line. She saw me struggling with a situation bigger than my capabilities and handed me Streams in the Dessert. It has been rocking my world ever since. I'm not sure if I am understanding each mornings lesson, but I am hearing what I need from each. It isn't a flowery, lengthy devotional that plays up only Gods love and that your life will be all sunshine and roses because you believe. This book is showing me that waiting, trials and the blows that life gives you are like strikes from a chisel. My sculptor has to strike blows to shape me into what he means for me to be. Waiting while not knowing can be a testimony. Waiting itself is not punishment, it is an opportunity to listen, a chance to show faith. I am struggling to find the balance of praying like a child, petitioning God with my hearts needs, and believing that what I have asked for in prayer because I believe will be mine. I guess this whole faith thing is far more complex than I could ever hope to understand. I am trying to know that the lack of information we have about our future is not a lack of God. He loves me, He knows where and when we are going, and just because He hasn't given me a sign or showed me the path we will go down does not mean He won't, it just means I may not be ready to see it yet.
My heart is hopeful today. I'm still scared of the day Brad calls to tell me when he'll be leaving. I'm in denial that my West by God Virginia coal miners daughter is packing her house and getting ready to move and taking two little blond pieces of my heart with her. Maybe I am supposed to learn what it feels like when someone leaves. I am always the one to leave my friends, I've never felt it from the other side. I am usually wrapped up in my own ordeal of relocating, and sad because I am leaving my whole life, I've never had to go through my best friend moving on and leaving me. Is this what I need to learn? Is God trying to teach me how to be a better friend? I have no idea. Is my husband leaving to work in another country going to show me how to be a better wife? I hope so, I hope they are lessons. If it's a lesson it means there is life to be lived on the other side of the lesson. We will all make it through this, even if right now it feels hopeless. I'm ready to rip this band aid off. Just get he hurt over with, but I am meant to wait. I will be repeating "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." over and over. I need to have better faith. God has heard me, He knows when to tell us what we should know. He knows my heart, and when it needs to love more and love better. He keeps cramming people in my life that I didn't expect. He keeps giving me family where ever I land and still I question Him and His timing. I am learning to Yet Have Believed.
