back and holding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it happened while i was painting the walls in the hallway. i was sitting on the tarp on the floor painting the new house and feeling, as i have every morning for the past 5 weeks since we moved in, pretty blessed. 

i like it here. i like the house, old and quirky and crooked and needing some work in time, but livable. it has character, history. i even like the town- the one i swore i would never live in. i like that i can walk to the post office, the drug store, the train station and restaurants, and a stream and fields and a farm. my yard is full of trees and a barn and our dogs are here (from uganda!) and family. mikes parents are a mile away and i got to spend three weeks with zoe which was wonderful. 

truth be told, i've been surprised by my reaction. i've been surprised by how happy i am. i've been almost waiting for myself to get totally overwhelmed, or to freak out over the choices at the stores, (i did pause at the sharpie aisle in target last week because there was an entire aisle for sharpies. i waited just to give myself a moment, but i was fine, even there). 

what happened yesterday was out of left field, totally unexpected and it caught me by surprise. i was painting and listening to music - just playing what is in my phone- and on came 'Africa' by Toto. i was singing along, until  

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you  

at which point i started bawling. full on ugly crying.

There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa  

i had to put down the brush. i couldn't see. tears were pouring. the flood gates opened - my memories opened and all the images came, flashes of home- like a slideshow.

Gonna take some time to do the things we never had 

i let the song play and the pictures in my mind carry me home. i let myself cry and grieve and feel that sadness that is real. just as real as that surprising joy and blessing that i feel about being here.

i think what got me were the words themselves and the truth and exhaustion of them. 

it's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you (africa)

even thought it was absolutely the right thing and the right time for us to go, i really hadn't planned on us ever leaving uganda.  it did take a lot to drag us away. 

life is hard. things don't go as planned (for most of us). and yet it's rich and full and beautiful in spite of our plans and ideas. 

i loved that moment in the stairwell messy crying yesterday. it reminded me of all of me. it balanced off the happiness of here with the appropriate sorrow of leaving my deeply loved home that i still think of every morning when i wake to the sounds of birds and even my neighbors rooster. it reminded me to think of my kids and how they  must be feeling a lot of the time. it also made space and gave permission for me to feel sad, to hold both, to love two things, to make room for all of it. 

for a lot of my life i have struggled with holding the tension of the opposites, so to avoid the tension, i've dropped one end and clung to the other. but this place of tension, this holding of opposites is where balance and harmony and all the good things are found. it's where God lives and where we connect with each other and where we find understanding and truth. life is a blend, it's gray, it's all the colors, it's both and, not either or.

today it's beautiful. there is heat and sun and i'm so thankful. 

but i also bless the rains down in africa.