the threshold

writing it down makes it real. 

i'm at that point where things are so close that i begin to subconsciously on purpose never know what day it so that time seems to stretch out. it's protective. it happens. i've been here before. 

but even in my lack of date specific awareness, there has been a lot of looking back. a bit of looking forward. and then doing life everyday. 

we are standing in the threshold. 

a threshold is a piece of wood that marks an entrance. a place or point of new beginning or change. a magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction to happen. a place between where you were and where you are going.

a threshold marks change. a passageway into what is next. you must go through it.

i am standing in the threshold of this season. i made myself count, in 18 days we fly away.

and it's beginning to sink in that when i return, i will not return to my life here. to my car and dogs and home and work. i will enter in as a visitor once again. i will stay with friends. it will feel different and people will say, "where do you stay?" and i will say words i never thought i would say, i will say, "wenham". 

as i've been standing in this threshold space for about a week now i have seen a few things happening. my skin is getting a bit tougher- i'm giving some distance- i'm pulling back a bit. noticing the potholes and the broken things and telling myself that i won't miss them, then thinking about family at home and looking forward to spending time with them after so many years spent so far away. 

and the other thing i've noticed is that when i look back with such deep love and nostalgia over these 10 years of raising little people with their grubby bare feet and skinny arms and home-style haircuts, is that so much of what i am grieving leaving is already gone. it's both taken by time and given back to me as memory. much of what i will miss i can't get back here anymore than i can get it back where i am going. my little children are big children but i am leaving the land where i raised them and that is sad and hard especially because it's sad and hard for them. 

so may we pass well through this threshold and on to the other side with joy for what is next knowing that the same God who went before us 10 years ago, is waiting on the other side again.