Moving Out, Back, and On

Through some sad circumstances my brothers and I are having to move us out much sooner than we'd hoped from the house Mom and I have been living in . I will be fully out by the time The Fisherman and I head for Alaska on May 8th. I'll help pack up Mom's stuff as much as possible before I leave but the guys will have some more time to finish up while I'm gone. That's one of the reasons I've been taking pictures around the house so much. And I'm glad I have been doing so. It is becoming a nice collection of images of Mom, snapshots of who she was.

So, I am moving out. Quickly and soon. I will be moving back to the mountains and my rural life. It's a mixed bag of emotions. I'm excited to return to living with my husband and in our rural mountain setting. But it is hard to leave this house where Mom and I lived together for three years. Hard to abruptly leave dear friends, a church I love and that has been a family to me for nearly 30 years. It is hard that this house will no longer be "ours" by the time I get back from Alaska. We're being denied the opportunity to linger in our sentimentality and whatever part it plays in our individual grief processes. It's hard for all of us. But I trust that God knows our hearts and our needs, and that we will be OK. More than that: that this stressful hardship will work for good in each of our lives. I think of a current song on KLOVE Christian radio that says:

"For I'll be by your side, wherever you fall
In the dead of night, whenever you call, and
Please don't fight, these Hands that are holding you.
My Hands are holding you."

I'm not fighting the Hands that are holding me. I have often done that in the past. I'm learning how to let them hold me even though hard things have passed through their permission to come to me.

As for moving on? Well, that will come more slowly as I settle in back home and as we figure out what shape our reunited life will take on as our future unfolds. We have dreams. We have visions and hopes. We're just not certain how they will emerge and develop. One day at a time we will see. I am uncertain what this mysterious "grieving process" will bring to me as well. I only know I haven't had much chance to even deal with it, being so busy with demands that have plagued me since Mom's death. I guess one day at a time we shall see about this, too.