Sometimes it helps, remembering where you’ve been.
Other times it’s enough to leave you in a fit of tears.
Make you crawl into bed, yank up the covers
to hide your face,
blot your tears.
It can be regret
for what you did
or didn’t do
that leaves you feeling this way.
Regret for what you did
or what was done to you.
Other times it’s the life you had
but don’t have any more.
And it’s a combination, I suppose, of all those things, that can get me, really get me, make me want to head for bed, cocoon myself in the covers, throw a temper tantrum of the grown-up type.
A photo can remind me. Bring to mind all that once was.
A photo, or basement, maybe. A basement full of boxes that represent my life.
Boxes. Time capsules.
And that’s just what I created, though I didn’t know it those many years ago, when I wrapped my treasured possessions in old t-shirts and lace, arranged them carefully in empty banana boxes until someday when I was older, when I’d want them again, when I’d have a daughter . . .
And I didn’t know, when with slim, tanned hands, I slid the lids off the dozens of silver boxes we received for our wedding, that I wouldn’t hear the rustle of that tissue paper or see the gleaming stainless steel and sparkling crystal again for another ten years . . .
Now, with a house of my own back on this side of the Atlantic, they have been delivered to me—water stained banana boxes and silver gift boxes alike, and a thousand memories come back, along with a thousand questions, as I unpack it all and set on the floor around me.
It brings a smile, leaves an ache, when I remember. When I remember that we only meant to stay in Scotland for a year, though it turned out to be eight. When I recall how desperately I’ve always wanted a daughter, though God knew I needed sons.
And I’d like to claim it doesn’t matter. That I’m above all that.
All that wishing for weekend trips to London.
London, when it was just a few hours’ drive away.
England, with all the birthplaces and resting places of those literary geniuses I so adore.
Scotland. Our home.
Our stone house in the village, with our view of the valley, and the short walk to a friend’s front door.
And the rain—how I learned to love the rain!—and the sound of the kettle when we made our tea.
And the mist, and how it never did stop putting wonder in my heart.
And I’d like to claim I haven’t cried for a little girl I could gift with my tea set, my Anne of Green Gables doll.
Yeah, I could pretend. I could pretend that it’s fine.
It’s just fine with me.
And I don’t have to wrestle. Not one little bit.
But I know, and you know, that would all be one fat lie.
And there’s such a thing, I’ve learned, as pain that’s clean.
Clean pain, like from a surgeon’s knife.
Clean pain, when you learn to see
He knows a better way.
And though I’ve always known it, in theory, that His ways are best, that He’d take you round the world and back again to bring you closer to Him, I didn’t really know it till I’d gone.
Round the world. And back.
And I have to still my heart a little, to realize He’d do all that
just for me.
And so when I doubt, when life seems about as predictable as a Kansas plain, when I’m pretending to let go, but my thumb and finger are pinching, holding tight to something I think I need to make me happy, that I can’t live without, that’s when I’ve got, just got, to remember what He’s done.
On the cross.
In my life.
The adventure! I’d never dared to dream.
My sin! Yet He has drawn me back.
My former life can seem quite rosy, in the scrapbook of my mind.
It’s easy to forget the shadows when we think of the past.
But when Love is waiting to catch you
it’s best to let go.
Let go and rest.
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You might also be inspired by “Sinking in Deep” https://happylittlesigh.com/2013/11/02/sinking-in-deep/
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