So anyway...this is the time and the season that the love humming just below my breastbone reminds me what I was waiting for. We pack up and move on because instinctively we know that we have to accept that nothing is meant to last forever. And so I am doing that - packing up my life as a single woman, boxing pictures in frames, shoving old clothes and memories and thoughts into garbage bags because quite frankly some things don't need to go to the next place and cannot go to Goodwill so someone else can make memories out of them. Some things have to go in the bright red metal receptacle outside my apartment waiting with open-mouthed anticipation.
So anyway...I have six large boxes in my room waiting for me to put in the things that I am keeping - books, journals, photographs of babies that are now adults and adults that are in some ways like children again needing care, and words scrawled in notebooks that will never see a bookstore shelf. They are waiting for me to put my singly purposed life in them, with the intent to be carried to a new location where space will be shared in a pseudo-forever fantasy. It won't be forever but it will mirror Heaven on earth in its intent. It won't be perfect but it will pull us closer to the One that pulled us closer to each other.
Glorious.
And so this is me, getting ready. This is me packing a life into storage containers, as if such a thing is even possible after 15 years of living life on my own terms. This is the process of saying good bye thankfully to the days when I thought I was in an apartment, forgotten by everyone. This is what other women (and men) traverse through when they are leaving the life of the bachelorette (bachelor) behind. The path will not be seen again after the vow recitation; there may be the (God-forbid) journey of a divorcee or the widow, but not the never married. My hands will hold my life and will place it in a box.
The statement was made that perhaps I was scared, uncertain, fearful of the unknown and the known. Quickly, "No, I am not" shot from my lips - not because the words were escaping before I could believe them but because this is NOT fear that I feel. It is awareness that some things are over for good, and that is okay. Some things need to end in life, though most people want to hold on to the things of yesterday and grab with full hands the things of tomorrow much to big for the grasp.
My mom has talked to me about some definite endings and possible endings in her life, though she has not explicitly used those words. Her eyes and her words hint at her thoughts. And the theme has rested on my mind lightly, like gentle feathers. I watch her and know that as surely as I am accepting the changes in my life, I do not know if I am so easily accepting hers - the presence of the AARP necessities, the signatures needed, the planning in the drawers of her house that will tell me later how to let her life change from what I am currently used to.
Mr. and I have talked about familial expansion so that her hands and his parents' hands can cradle the baby to be born before they are not able to. This is very important to us because our own grandparents meant so much to us, loving us into a place of being "spoiled" in some ways. Baby must be loved like this by our parents - a sure gift hinted at around the dinner table.
Still, with each silent moment this weekend, as I pack up life, looking again at things that have to be hidden from view (even after the next location settles me), I will indeed wrap it up. In a little more than a month, the bridge between "here" and "there" will be crossed. In my imagination I wonder about how many more things will be different with a second point of view in the considerations. One thing that has injured my heart in this process (because how could it ever be clean cut?) is the shaking of all that can be shaken: the absence of friends that I chose to release, the need for more solid loves, the defined roles that have to be established now. This is never easy; it cannot be.
People are what they are; some pulled close have to be released. I have no tolerance for selfishness anymore, but I understand that I have been selfish once. So I know what it is like to be human wanting more than can be given when others are already stretched thin. Some times the ones we love think they know us so well that they want to cross roles and boundaries in ways that can place a crack in a place that is already fragile. And I believe that in this journey, this Esther process, the proof of this is exactly what is manifesting. The sad issue to me is when it is apparent to everyone, it smacks of something that cannot be ascertained or restored.
I have read Esther's story many times over wondering how she went from one life: relationships, patterns of behavior, lifestyle to a totally separate other. The past life was not able to intersect with where God intended for her to go next. She packed her clothes to go live in a palace or a brothel for a king's use. Whatever friendships she had before, decisions she made before, dreams she had before were all of non-effect once a king came into the picture. I am pretty sure that like me she was hurt that her friends from the neighborhood, even the ones that she thought knew her well, could not go with her and even their advice had to be left in the place where she used to live. She almost had to view what used to be advice for nosyness once her location changed.
I wonder as she packed her things, threw away things not fit for where she was going, how she felt about her future. I do. Not fearfully or with the thought that I am making a mistake, but with a clear awareness that some realities are transferable while others are not. I can take "this" with me but because "that" represented some elements of my past (not necessarily bad), it cannot travel down the highway with me. We talk about transferable skills in a job market or in a place of employment, but marriage is also a place where some skills that were okay when you were on your own cannot be used anymore when life changes again.
So everytihing else either gets packed up or thrown away. You thank God for yesterday's treasures and even the things you thought were treasures but were really junk. You thank Him for the lessons in the single state. You keep it in your heart that you traveled on your own for a season and were able to utilize some major developmental changes. But now?
Some things just can't go with you to be used later. There is no recycling of everything in the palace. Esther's old clothes, habits, friends, and customs could not be used and were discarded. The Bible does not say that she grieved over the loss of those old elements of who she used to be. She came into her new life with the understanding that where she came from mattered but where she was going mattered more.
Me too.
Now that is true wedding preparation.
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