My youngest packed up his Prius this morning and drove back for his last semester of college. As I dodged in and out of the bathroom to hide my full-body sobs, I discovered that I’ve become an expert at breaking down one minute and pulling it back together the next.
The last few years have given me a lot of practice that most
people would simply call “life.” Our family has not suffered unrecoverable
blows to our foundation, just a lot of small paper cuts to the tips of a few too
many fingers that simply refuse to heal.
As late afternoon turned into evening, I sat on the far edge
of our living room sofa and told my husband that I had spent the entire day
feeling sorry for myself. I proceeded to hopscotch from one subject to the
next, avoiding my husband’s eyes for fear his confusion would become one more
source of self-pity. The tears began to fall again, and I let them dry on my
cheeks to await the next round sure to come later.
For someone who does not like change, the last few years
have hit me with an onslaught of seasons. A long and cold winter with too much
snow, became freshly mowed grass and bright pink zinnias, only to turn to crisp
fall leaves and another winter to shovel out from under once again.
Yesterday my husband and I sat at our kitchen table across
from yet another real estate agent. While my husband excused himself to
retrieve some papers in our secret file cabinet of life, I sat face to face
with a woman who smelled sweetly of hard work and high success to my
where-has-my-life-gone flannel and stained Ugg slippers. She explained why she
was the one to sell our newly-built home and I rolled a hundred reasons through
my head as to why she would never be able to find the right buyer for this
house.
When we moved from what was essentially our life-long home
two years ago, I mourned and moved on as best I could. Change is a guarantee in life and those who
refuse to roll into its sucker punch mostly become bitter people who, like me
currently, give into self-pity.
I want to be angry and have someone to blame. It is a
familiar place for me. When I launch my grenades full of bitterness that
freefall from our log walls to our cold, hard floors, my husband sweeps them up
and gently lays them on the counter: “these sorts of things happen to people
every day”; “other qualified people are applying for these jobs too”; “we have
a lot of things to be thankful for.” Uggghhhh…. such optimism.
“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal; it is the
courage to continue, that counts.” This is one of my favorite quotes from
Winston Churchill that seems to describe our lives right now: our successes
certainly were not final; our failure, or, as I prefer to call it, our
set-backs, were not fatal. But we always seem to find the courage to continue.
In the grand scheme of life, courage and faith and following a line forward,
while refusing to curse the past, is really the only choice.
Every year I seek to find some goodness or goal to pursue.
Last year in January I didn’t much feel like doing this. So, this year I am
picking up my goals once again and hoping I can turn something into goodness. I
have found that gratitude, mostly, is a muscle that needs to be worked daily,
and fear, something that needs to be fought with a steadily-held sword minute by
minute.
This year I hope to fight the fear with warrior precision
and fill my empty jar with gratitude and praise to better grow the baggy bicep of my heart. All the better to roll into the changes, sure to come, courageously. It is only change.
