I just read my last post about turning things over to G-d and allowing Him to take care of things. Hindsight: Everything then worked out just fine. It just took a bit of time to sort out. Not my time, but G-d time. And I need to remember that right now, too.
So where am I now? Empty nesting. Beginning to get a glimmering of where G-d means me to minister. Acceptance of what can't be changed. Not liking it, mind you, just accepting that this is the way things are. Grieving the changes I've faced, we've faced.
I feel...unclothed... without a child at home. My husband and I are feeling our way around in our relationship. There's no doubt of the love we have for one another. We're just not sure of how to be Terri and John rather than Mom and Dad on a daily basis, and it feels very different. We began our relationship as parents and now that we're essentially stripped of that role (because parenting adults has not, in our experience, been anything at all like the continual work of hands on parenting of younger children), we don't really know how to act. We were a team as parents. Now we're not a team anymore, we're just two people.
John's just back at work this week, after three weeks at home. We were feeling our way to what our marriage might be and had just about developed a rhythm of our own and now he's back at work. And frankly I feel a bit lost. Without any anchors at all.
When did I lose sight of my individual self? Was it during those years when G-d disciplined me about selfishness? Was it when I fell in love with John? Was it just the natural toll of parenting and the reversal of roles when caring for my dad when he was ill and taking care of Mama? Admittedly I find it very easy to want to please others, but no clue what I want of myself. I feel restless, and at odds with the world and strangely alone. John has his work, his ministry work. I have him. And housework. And as he reminds me, I have writing but I don't really. Not now. I had writing. But the battering of the last three years took up a lot of time. There's been little time to really write, to hone the work I loved best. I've lost heart for it really.
I suppose that's why this afternoon I felt it necessary to pick up on this blog once more, because if Penny Ann Poundwise, my alter ego, is about my life as a homemaker and wife and cook, and home decorator, and daughter, then this blog is about exploring who I am.
Do you know I've spent 31 years of my life parenting? Between this marriage and my first, I 've been a wife for nearly 33 years. I've only been a writer for a bit less than 10 years. I didn't come into my own as a woman until I was in my early 30's and now I'm at a different place in my life. I'll never be the prettiest girl in the room, I never was. It's not the loss of my looks, because honestly those are about as good as they ever were. It's about losing something else that I can't quite put my finger upon. Does it have to do with the change of season in my life? Is it just sheer weariness? Just this feeling of limbo?
I don't feel old. Not often, anyway, lol. But I do feel as though time has slipped away from me. I'm 51, very near 52. It's not old, but it's moving there rather quickly. I've always thought I'd live to a ripe old age, but there's a bit more fear now, when you're this close to age, that touches you. It's like seeing that you're nearing the end of a journey and even though you might have a nice stay at the end, you know it's the end all the same.
Geez, I didn't start out blue today, nor am I especially now. I think it's just that feeling of wandering about in my own life, waiting for the next chapter, that's left me feeling as I do at the moment. Not particularly confident, not sure of anything except that I need to go through this time of waiting.
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