Moving

I'll be moving in 6 days. It's for work; I have a new job, and I love it. These past weeks have involved a lot of driving though, and I'll be very glad for that part of the transition to be over. My mind feels as though it has no place to land. There is no settling point for my thoughts and the blank pages I'm used to filling in the early morning hours have remained sadly vacant. Conversely, my mind is full-- the pages of my thoughts are bursting with information-- considering, turning, changing, asking.

The new job has meaning-- eternal meaning-- so it's very different than my job before. And the new job is in a different town, a place I lived once for short while, so that everything will still feel new and hopefully like an adventure. All this different means things are changing, it means new beginnings, but it also means I'm thinking about some things, some people, who I've not been able to let go of. I've been realizing, slowly, that hard work might be necessary for me now. I mean the hard work of asking myself why? Why do you hold onto this?

In his recently re-released book, Father Fiction, Don Miller puts it this way: "I don't actually like thinking about this stuff, but I have a sense wounds don't heal until you feel them."

So I'm wondering what these feelings are that I have tucked neatly away these past years, the way I am packing my dishes and wine glasses, carefully wrapping them tightly, slipping them into the dark and safe corners of boxes and forgetting exactly where they are. I'll figure it out later, I tell myself. I'll figure it out when it becomes absolutely necessary, but only then.

But what healing is waiting for me if I do the work of broaching the questions? It is so easy to avoid hard things. It is so easy to avoid pain, to avoid grief. It's so easy to put off difficult conversations, even if they have the potential to change everything. And is it better?

I fear that I lack the courage and the self-discipline to go searching into those shadowed spaces.