September 2, 2009 @ 6:35 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.” - Dennis Prager
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(originally journaled in early April 2009.)
The past few weeks have been surreal.
I can scarcely believe we are actually doing this. I keep waiting for the REAL me to rise up and say something along the lines of “what the…?” But there is nothing except certainty that is flowing smooth and easy inside of me.
Even as I pack the house in the late night hours when I’m all alone, moving through the rooms and hallways, I have no qualms about this decision. It’s the nighttime that is usually the breeding ground for fear and trepidation and – some nights – I keep waiting on it. But it’s a visitor that never knocks.
My logic tells me that surely I must have been konked on the head and awakened with some other woman’s rationale and emotions. This is NOT me. I worry. I fret. I resist change.
I’m emotional.
But the reality is that I’m calm and certain, in a way that I just can’t explain. In less than two weeks I will walk out of this house – this style of living – and I will walk into an apartment over an hour away. We will know no one. I will stay many, many nights by myself while Mike is on the road. I am leaving behind the concept that “bigger is better” and the theory that as I get older, my “things” should become bigger, nicer, finer…
I sit here tonight and wonder what happened to the woman I was. When I look in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I look the same. But I no longer recognize the inner woman. I don’t know her. I think I should be afraid.
But I’m not.
I go to bed with peace and awaken with a quiet excitement.
I don’t know what to expect, but I do know that I should be expectant.
(Two weeks later…)
Tomorrow the movers will come.
By this time tomorrow night, I will be preparing to spend my first night in Commerce. In an apartment. In a community that is so unlike any I’ve lived in before.
Boxes are packed and labeled. Many will go with us into our new home, but even more will go into storage. We are losing over 1400 square feet of living space with this move, so – in ways even we had not anticipated – simplicity is truly finding us.
It’s a funny thing. Sometimes the very thing we ask for, pray for, finds us and takes us by surprise. Very seldom is it packaged the way we’d imagined, or presented in a way we’d recognize.
But it is a gift, nonetheless, presented by Him, simply because we requested it.
There have been so many mini-miracles (is there such a thing? are they all huge, and that is why they are miracles…?) to transpire over the past couple of weeks that we have almost been amused. I’m pretty certain that I have both, laughed out loud and broken down and cried, because it further solidifies that this move is the one thing that needs to be done.
Even in the moments when my logic kicks in and I run through the mental list of just why this is a crazy move, and just who probably now thinks we’ve lost our minds, and where I’m headed…even in those moments I can’t ignore the obvious.
Too many things have aligned in short order. Too many people have unknowingly been a part of this plan. Too many past prayers and nights and days spent in restlessness -knowing that I was in the big middle of the deep, learning to swim and tread water, and yet not being able to see the other shore. In a crazy, crazy, definitely unforeseen way, I’ve reached the banks and I’m crawling ashore. It’s certainly not where I’d pictured myself washing up. The beach is not white and sandy like I prefer. The water is not crystal clear and cool to the touch. It’s not paradise. It’s not my dream.
But for some reason that I am still helpless to explain, it has become…home.
Tomorrow I go there.
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