Revisiting history.

Two years ago is when it all started to fall apart.

As a fully grown adult with lots of life experience, the slippage into grief came slowly. Maybe it was the sense of being invisible. Because honestly, I’m pretty sure older women ARE among the least noticeable people (IYKYK). Maybe it was the years of anxious thoughts and worries about all the various things. When I was younger, it just seemed like normal life to be continually concerned. I did know how to have fun, how to fall in love, how to have dreams, how to be smart and later on, how to commune with God, at least some of the time. So I guess I assumed that anxiousness was just part of the mix of things I was dealt.

What cropped up two years ago was new - something I could not actually touch at first. The self-made steadiness I required and sometimes grasped seemed to evaporate into the air. Even though I’d been self-employed for over 20 years, the atmosphere changed dramatically within just a few months. A newish client that I was on the verge of being passionate about suddenly went dark. I wasn’t sure why. A very long-term client called and said he was going in a different direction. It felt weird to break up on the phone with someone, but I understood. My body stopped cooperating with my ‘easy’ life - it just wanted to nap in the afternoon. Even my vintage side hustle gave way to the ‘trend’ of collecting vintage, and squeezed me (and the fun of it) out of the mix. I was no longer necessary, and I didn’t know at the time how much that mattered.

All the in-between seemed different, too. I spent a significant amount of time looking through Indeed and otherwise trying to dream up my next move. Caught between fear and ‘what else did I expect’ was the knowledge that seasons do NOT last forever, nor should they. I held fast to the only thing I knew at the time: finding joy in little spaces and leaning on the people I trust and love. That method seemed to hold me together, a grateful meal for a starving soul.

And then suddenly, it’s now. Two years later and I’m starting to see through the blind spots.

What occurs to me is that you don’t notice gradual change in the moment most of the time. All of the days and hours and months of becoming different, inside and out, didn’t happen in one fell swoop. But as I look at this strangely familiar self after two years in the wilderness, I see more clearly who she was becoming all along.

She cares more about who she is than what she does.

She tries to let things go sooner, and sometimes she is successful.

She laughs almost every day with the ones who have been there all along.

She looks forward to tomorrow, because things do tend to look new in the morning.

She is not letting fear chase her down with each time it decides to come for her.

She feels a little spark of something good, like homemade soup simmering on the stove. Something related to the quiet, and the listening, and the resting.

She wonders if she is on a path to the person Jesus saw all along. Maybe, just maybe, this is the real her.