Rebuilding

My oldest is currently on a tour of Asia and is doing a magnificent job of blogging about her experiences.  One of the things she wrote about today was how interesting it is to be in Tokyo and hear the tour guide talk about the things that used to stand where big new buildings are now. Places that were ravaged by war or earthquake or fire, now hold no image of what used to be. We have often lamented the fact that our city really has no historic buildings. I love old buildings…architecture that required skilled craftsmen at stonework, plaster, glass, wood carving…beauty that sometimes gets lost in the quest to build bigger, better, more modern. I miss seeing remnants of days gone by…smelling the aroma of antiquity.

Once again, I see pictures of my life in that. I feel like an old building that was beautifully constructed, remodeled a few times, showed signs of wear but was standing strong ready to weather all that life would bring. Little did I know that there was a tornado coming that would wipe out the foundation, take off the roof, shatter windows and level all of the walls.  It seems as if my life will forever hold the date of January 21, 2016 as the dividing line between the before and after. On that day, everything changed. I woke up the next morning and it was as if I had just come out of the storm shelter only to find nothing but debris scattered everywhere. 

I remember as a child, growing up in tornado alley, experiencing the devastation that a tornado can bring in a matter of minutes. I remember driving through the neighborhood seeing people’s clothes hanging from trees; finding priceless family pictures that belonged to someone else in our front yard; seeing animals and people try to find their bearing, not even recognizing their own street. Sometimes there was a warning, but at other times, it seemed to drop out of the sky in an instant and catch everyone off guard. 

That’s how my tornado hit. No warning. No siren. No emergency interruption on the TV. It just dropped out of the sky and leveled everything in its path. I’m still trying to find my bearing…looking for landmarks from the life before…finding family pictures splattered with the mud of realizing he was doing it then. I don’t see very much of my life before existent in this life after…other than the breath I breathe in and out of my lungs.  

My body is changing…my hair is falling out in handfuls…new wrinkles,…rapid weight loss…a stomach that never feels quite right…hands that shake and legs that feel weak. My surroundings have changed…I don’t even have a permanent home right now. Family has changed…the family I loved (in laws) I thought I had for 30 years has been snatched away as if they never existed…the relationship with my kids forever altered. My passion for my career has been doused like a fire drenched with a cold bucket of water. Weekends and evenings are spent wondering what happened instead of enjoying dinners with our couple friends laughing, sharing, eating and drinking. Nothing feels the same. Everything has the marks of the tornado of betrayal sprayed on it.

I wonder, one day, will someone say of me like they do of the lost buildings of Tokyo, “I remember when she looked like______. “ or “Remember how before it all was uncovered we used to _____?” or “I don’t remember what it was like before, but I’ve heard_______.”  

My only hope is that now that everything has been razed, maybe a new foundation can be laid…one that is stronger and more deeply grounded.  New walls can be constructed…fortified with the knowledge that another tornado can hit and take them down again. Maybe the windows will give a view of a different landscape…seeing a little more clearly the horizon and the threat of an impending storm. Maybe this new shelter will be a place where others who have had their own tornado, can find comfort and strength and healing. And maybe…just maybe it will be a place where a new life can be formed that doesn’t hold too many memories of the tornado that ravaged the old dwelling that once stood there. 

“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. Isaiah 58:12

Downsizing

This was moving week.  We had planned for a couple of years to downsize…but I never saw myself leaving the house I’d lived in for 13 years alone. I dreamed of selling the house, paying off our mountain of debt, moving into a condo with no upkeep, being financially free and enjoying this chapter of our lives. I dreamed of taking the trips we had dreamed about for years. I imagined having grandchildren coming over and playing in the neighborhood pool and tag team babysitting for a weekend while the kids went out of town. I thought we would reconnect what had become disconnected during the years of raising kids. 

I never in a million years dreamed this.

In packing the 4,500 square foot house that was our home, I went through every closet, every cabinet, every inch of that house taking apart the memories. Each item I touched required me to ask, “Is this mine? Is this his? Is this the kid’s? Is it trash? Does it go to Goodwill? Can it be sold? Do I need it in the next month in temporary housing? Do I need it in the next year in my apartment? Do I want to put it in storage?”  Every. single. piece…every. single. question. 

I have had many moments of complete paralysis, unable to process the questions any more. I stood in my dining room, holding the turkey platter that held countless Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams. It wasn’t an expensive platter, but it had become part of our family’s history. I held it for what seemed to be eternity…unable to ask the questions. The questions became, “Will I ever need this platter again? Will I ever host Christmas or Thanksgiving with a 25 pound turkey to feed the multitude of friends and family that would be seated around 3 different tables full of bounty and laughter and love? Tables where the china matched the napkins, matched the placemats…decorated with love and pride to honor those who would sit there…where they would feel blessed with each thoughtful detail knowing they were worth the trouble. Will I need it this year…the first Thanksgiving and Christmas where the reminder of all that has been lost will be so thick with grief I don’t know how to bear it? Does it go to storage with the hopes that one day, in a new life with new families, the tradition will be revived? The turkey platter and I sat in the floor together, remembering, longing, hoping, grieving. 

I’m finding grief is a funny companion. At times he disappears and you wonder where he went and when he will return…certain he will. Other times, you wish him away and long for the days before you knew him. On days like the one described above, he sits on the ground with you and wraps you in a cloud of his presence and gives you room and time to drink him in, cry, wail, fight, scream…until you accept that he will be with you for a while. Then you pick up the turkey platter, wrap it in bubble wrap, put it in a box and realize…not now. I don’t have to make this decision now. It can wait until grief has done its work there.  

A few days later, I decide the turkey platter will go into storage along with the turkey roaster, baster, placemats and napkins. It will be near the opening of the storage unit, ready to be carefully unwrapped at a moment’s notice and filled with a magnificent bird. It doesn’t fit in my new…hopefully temporary life. It will be too big for my table that only seats 4…the roaster too big for my tiny apartment size oven. I’m realizing a lot of my past life is too big for my present life. I’m downsizing in many ways…downsizing my commitments, my friends, my hopes and dreams. Downsizing my possessions, my wants, my activities…hoping that in downsizing, I find the richness of what I have left. I have what I need and for now that must be enough.

Land Mines

Today was hard.  One of those days that starts with optimism and hope...maybe healing is around the corner, maybe he's repentant, maybe he IS the person I thought he was, maybe he does care, maybe I CAN forgive...
               and then, just when I think I'm in the clear...
                                                                   another land mine.

I walk through my day, through the responsibilities at work, packing up the remnants of my home of 13 years, celebrating life events with dear friends...trying to hide the wounds from the shrapnel I just plucked from my heart.

An acquaintance, someone who taught my kids in Sunday school, who sat in my Bible studies, who knows my family...asked a friend about me because she noticed she hadn't seen me with him for a while. My friend told her the shell of the story without all of the gory details, and the acquaintance told the friend she had seen him out a couple of times with someone, and didn't know how to tell me.

The explosion that happens in my mind and heart as I hear the story relayed to me, travels to my stomach, to my bowels, to my head and suddenly the room is spinning, I am breathless and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I was told by him that 'nothing happened in town...it was all out of town.' I text him...I ask if he did anything in town, and he confesses he did. Once again, the heart, the stomach, the bowels, the head, the spinning, the shallow breath, the cotton mouth...and the realization...IT. WILL. NEVER. END.

I want it to stop. I want to run. I will get cash from the sale of our house in a few days. I have a car. I can go anywhere...start over...somewhere where no one knows me, knows him, knows the story.  A place where I can go to church without wondering who knows what, who thinks I was to blame, who feels pity, who knew before I did. Somewhere that holds hope and space to re-create my life, somewhere to heal and taste freedom. A place where no one knows this wasn't supposed to happen to me...where no one expects me to be 'Karen..Bible study teacher, worship leader, business owner, mentor, friend, mom'. Where no one is looking for me to be 'super Christian'...able to get over this faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful to hold it together than a locomotive, able to forgive the most heinous acts in a single bound.

My friends remind me that I will NEVER know the truth.  I will never be able to trust that he has told me it all.  I will never know the extent to which he went to deceive me. I will never know how dark and twisted the truth is...and further more they say, I don't need to know.

I will never be able to escape the land mines.

                      AND

I don't know if I can live with that.    


I tell myself I can leave it all behind...a business that does fine without me; the stuff -all of it tainted with memories of OUR life; the kids that don't want to be around me anyway...I'm a reminder of all that is broken...they want the cat; the friends that I fear are growing weary...it's been 7 months...it's time to move on and stop dwelling on it and rehearsing it.
What else is here for me? More memories of restaurants we celebrated anniversaries and birthdays in? More questions of where he met 'them'...what they did? I long to be somewhere where every turn doesn't hold a ghost, a shadow, a reminder that my marriage was a farce...a facade...a lie.


The ground underneath me feels like I'm walking on jello. I want off the roller coaster. I didn't sign up for a life long ticket on this ride. I don't HAVE to stay. I HAVE a choice. I HAVE a voice. I HAVE the option to exit the ride. And tonight, I'm going to live in the tension of that...of not having to decide tonight whether there is enough beauty in the ashes worth staying for.