change

[We moved. It's official. And we officially don't have Internet...thus lack of blogging. Not to mention, of course, the painting, the tearing down of carpets, the new flooring, the painting, the cleaning, the unpacking, the tearing up of bushes, the painting, the mowing...etc. However, I promise I have not left forever. I'm sure you understand. I did take time to hand write something yesterday (what a wonderful, and sadly enough, lost art). I'm sharing it with you now. It is honest. And real. And I will return soon, as there is SO much more to write about-- end of school, our new house, our second year anniversary, SUMMER, and so much more... just be patient with me, please. Also, I'm assuming you're still there: are you!?]

I have never liked change.

My barbies always wore the same clothes, I always wanted to drink juice out of the purple cup, and for this very reason puberty was a nightmare for me.

Leaving for college was a very painful experience. I felt like I was being torn away-- like a kid that doesn't want to come in for supper because the weather is perfect and being outside seems like the best way to spend the rest of your life. Inevitably though I packed up, I drove away, I made my bunk bed in the dorm and cried for a few months. But eventually... yes, eventually... the unfamiliar became familiar and the thought of leaving what I had built at college seemed impossible--insurmountable. So I began to dream up a way to return home after college. I would then be able to skip the brutality of change and, in a sense, return to my own backyard where everything made sense.

However, it seemed Louisville was dragging me away from this dream.

Change was unrelenting with me yet again. New marriage. New city. New job. New. New. New. I made my now double bed and cried for a few months.

Eventually though, just as new things lose their shine, the glare slowly faded and I was able to see. Friendships were built-- real and true and beautiful. Marriage became what we knew and it flourished, and maps were no longer needed to drive downtown. Yet when we would travel home the familiarity tugged at me still. The smells, the colors, the sounds. There was a magic there and the dream I had dreamt in college occasionally fluttered back to me.

And then, without much warning, it became a reality.

We were going to be returning home. I didn't understand why, and I'm still not fully sure I do now, but I began to cry when I thought of leaving Louisville. A friend tole me that these were tears of "unexpected blessings." I was thankful for them because moving there was one of the hardest things I had ever done, and they meant I had let that change happen to me. But I was also deeply confused by them. My dream I'd had since packing up my room after high school graduation was coming true-- so why were my cheeks salty and wet and my heart so heavy?

All of those years I had been fighting change, change had happened to me. In my leaving-Louisville-tears I realized this, and I feared not only the change of another move, but knew that how I had changed would be magnified upon returning home. Would I fit in the places that used to hold me?


Nevertheless, I did the impossible and the insurmountable yet again-- I said goodbye, I packed up my life, and I moved forward towards change.

I never thought I would view returning home as change, after all this is the place that made me. But I'm realizing now I wasn't a finished product at age 18. College continued to make me; Louisville continued to make me.

Bill Bryson once wrote about returning home by saying, "It is so disconcerting to find yourself so simultaneously in your element and out of it."

And so here is where I find myself: in and out of my element. The dream I always had to escape change proved faulty. Change is all around me and it's as much a part of my life as my curly hair. I still dislike it as much as I did when I was little, but I've also learned that there is a certain charm in the unknown, in the uncertainties before me.

After all we all know it's not only necessary, but good to eventually come inside and eat your supper.