A lighter dark.

I'm sitting here in the backyard tonight, watching the moon come up. It's wide and full. Shiny, like a florescent pearl against charcoal sky. I'm listening, trying not to. I wish it was quiet. The freeway is so loud. It's too close. The neighbors are too there and if I look closely, I can barely see just a hint of orange above the roof next door, where the sun has trailed away.

Sweet sunset. I've grown to love my mountains, but I get so anxious for fields.

I've had a hard time breathing this last year. And writing, too, but you've probably noticed that. I sit down. I type and untype. Type and untype, and then leave it alone. I've left it all alone for so long, I think I've stopped thinking in words. It's all become so tangled, settling someplace low.
How do you begin to write something you've wanted to for ten months? Where do you start or begin, when you don't know when the beginning was? Was it seven years ago? Or one? How do you explain to someone else what you can't explain to yourself?

And how do you come back from being a little lost? My heart is always a crystal spring. It's been less so lately. It seems I've been treading deeper water. And sidestepping, too. It's become a dance for me.

But I've come here to be honest; to say what I need to say (to myself), and then carry myself elsewhere. To lay it out like a map, so I can see where I've been. And more importantly, where I'm going.

June brought sweetness to me last year. I tasted heaven delivering our second darling. His perfect birth was such a direct answer to my prayers, I soared all summer long. And it was sweet. But then autumn came, and after that, heavier things seemed to come and rest themselves on my shoulders and on my heart.

When my parents sold our home in October, I could never have put into words what I was mourning. Months later, I'm quite sure no one understands me in this regard. It's connected, in my heart, to so much more than even I knew, more than I will ever be able to say to anyone, mostly because I know there will never be words. And I've come to understand that that's okay.

A few months ago, I tried to explain it (again) to a sleepy, pillowed Mr. Keller and then finally, in some swift late-night moment, I understood it myself. Selling our home meant saying goodbye to so much more than a place. It forced me to realize I had to bid a final goodbye to my beloved people. To younger, beloved versions of dear friends. To memories, and to a sweet, sweet time in my life that had slipped right through my small, young hands. I think without realizing it, or even understanding myself, I had hung onto so much, knowing whenever I went home, I could revisit old feelings and deeper parts of my heart I couldn't always have open back here. Old wounds, old friends, old love. Moving boxes and an empty house made it so clear how closed that final door truly was. If not there, I wondered where the girl inside me belonged anymore.

Winter came, changing my body, as it always does. And with two littles, instead of one, I stretched myself as I could. Then my sister decided to leave her little family and children, which continuously broke our hearts (and still does). And by the time spring was here, my health was thin and I was cold and tired and gone. I sort of slipped beneath then. I stayed there a while.

Mr. Keller kept treading. (He's so very strong for me.) With him assuredly behind me, I questioned so much, with few answers. I would delve; feel around for something to hold to, and when I found there was nothing there that I could directly understand, it was so strange and precise how I would somehow find calm. It was always real, once I found it. And it was always there, if I sought it enough.

It was resting in the calm that I finally grew. Somewhere between last year and now,  I've found and lost, found again and lost forever a few things I've come to understand I will never be the same without. I've learned I have to stop trying to gather pieces; to stop spending myself trying to make sense of things that don't, trying to soothe what can't be fixed, or trying to unchange what has so willfully changed itself. Accepting that made me a stranger to myself, but when I finally understood, I came back around. There's a vast wide world so much bigger than I am. And there is God, my sweet father, who knows me better than I know my changing self.

My beloved Tolkien said, "How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep..that have taken hold."

It's time to move myself on.

That is what I mean to say and what I've come to understand. It's time to finally let it go. To realize I won't ever be the same. I never will. I'll never get those years back, I'll never have my old boys again, (we're all so changed now). I'll never be that girl I miss so much. I'll never have a home that means the same to me as that one did. It was a sweet, long chapter (or two), but it has closed. If it didn't hurt, it would mean it wasn't good. And it was. So good.

But so is this.

There was a summer seven years ago that in retrospect, has become so sacred to me I can't speak much of it. Mr. Keller was there himself, and we can barely talk about those months even with each other. Remembering them, my head floods with bright white thoughts and even brighter feelings. Those thoughts alone are what have seen me through. I love the word 'intended'. It implies love, care, and a plan. God is intentional. He loves us. He knows what's best for us and if we let Him, He guides us right down the path He knows will be the best for us in the end.

I'm not to the end just yet. I'm still writing, walking down and around. It's summertime outside and in my life. And it's glorious and bright and good. Even in weaker parts of my heart, (the ones that I know will always be there), I somehow, eventually find sun. Which, as it turns out, is what I needed all along.

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How strange and powerful, the love of home.
Stranger still to be alive at all,
to be anywhere, in all its endless detail,
and the millions of tiny locks that will be broken
before you can be released from where you are
to return again to the place,
so many years ago, you started from,
the nothing that is everywhere but here.
-Michael Creagan