Begin Again

Three more weeks.

I glance at my calendar hanging on the wall on my way to grab my coffee steaming in the kitchen.

Three weeks left in my lake house, in my favorite town.

Yes, God has provided me with my new place, and it is good. But it will be so different.

I can’t believe I am moving again. This will be the third time in 22 months. That’s actually a lot of moving when I think about it. Packing belongings in boxes, taking down paintings and words that make my space feel special, paint on the walls I chose that made me feel safe and calm.

I never thought I would be leaving my lake house so soon. That I would be making my way to a new town again, breaking in a new space.

The memories. So much has happened here in the span of 15 months. Learning to breathe again. Cups of tea with my friend Sarah late at night. Working myself into a frenzy writing freelance until my bleary eyes couldn’t see the screen. Curling up with a quilt and good book to soothe the turmoil within. //

My stroke, right there at my living room table. Coming home to a quiet house on late December and January days for a few hours as I recovered at my parents’, just to get out and keep from going stir crazy.

My heart procedure, two months later. A few minor bouts of anxiety as I reckoned with the aftermath of life turned upside down, magnified in silence, in my aloneness. The deep reconstruction of my soul over an impossibly cold winter and spring. My recovery. God shifting and saving my life.

The hole in my kitchen ceiling for three and a half months, and my landlord finally sending someone to fix it. Opening my door one morning to The Boy who would repair not just my ceiling, but my heart, my joy, my light. Our friendship, then relationship, developing over the months, his constant kindness.

All my walks to the water, wandering out to the lighthouse on a Tuesday morning or Friday evening, just because I could. Hearing bands perform at the restaurant on the lake, people milling about on a summer evening, the softness of a fall weekday when everyone heads back to work and school.

There is so much I am going to miss. Moving on again. Getting used to somewhere else. New seasons I have no say in. Am I not allowed to feel settled in my life? What I wouldn’t give to learn a rhythm I can rest in, find a normal.

My reading room is full of boxes. I should have kept the boxes from last year’s move, but how was I supposed to know?

Always we begin again.

The timeless words of Saint Benedict. A balm for the bumps along the journey.

We are constantly unlayered, always a shift of who we are, who we are becoming. Always, there is good at the end of every tide, the beginning of a beach that leads into a wide berth of land.

I tell myself, treasure what you’re losing, but stay hopeful for what you will gain.

Right now, I am trying to savor every minute, every crow caw, the smooth gleam off the lake. Walking down the hill to the ice cream and chocolate shop. Just walking around downtown, along the harbor. Those sweet, lazy, carefree moments, healing me, watering the soil of my soul, the bloom.

Because I will begin again, grow into the next phase of myself, into the world around me. Because there will be gain. God’s fingerprints are pressed all over the page, ready to turn. Always, what God brings, who God is, is what is good.

Continuing my attempt at the Five Minute Friday weekly writing challenge. Five minutes to write on the assigned topic. Raw and unedited. (Yikes!) This week’s topic: Again.   // symbolizes where five minutes started and/or stopped.