One Year Anniversary

I began this post some time ago - didn't finish it. Couldn't finish it then. So I finish it now - it will actually be 13 months tomorrow. But at the time I began this entry - it was one year.

365 days

That is the time that has passed since Jim left for work in North Dakota.

Today I guess you might say is our anniversary. No cake. No gifts. No wine (well, actually I did have a big 'ole glass this evening).

I just returned from a 10 day trip to visit you in North Dakota. It was good to be together for more than a weekend - Brooke and I drove ourselves and how I loved to be able to be there with you and Hailey and Jordan while they work their summer away - it was a slice of heaven to all be together.

A year is a long time. So many changes and adjustments to make. I just strolled down memory lane, rereading year old posts as I tried to wrap my mind and life around this new arrangement. I couldn't hold back my tears as I read that post the day you left - I forgot how raw I was.

And all the difficulties the past year brought that I never posted about...because it was more than i could do:

Our firstborn leaving for college in England - taking her by myself and putting her on a plane, heart-wrenching in ways I could not fathom.

Exhaustion that sleep doesn't cure.... parenting solo.... making only one side of our queen sized bed - a reminder every morning of this cost.

I do not wish to linger here - in the hard places. We have been blessed in this time too - we have learned to drink deep and to be stretched into new shapes we didn't know we could make. We have grown tender and thankful - more deeply thankful than ever.

I flip through a journal I found - only a few entries - I wish I would have written more - but they are prayers laced with such sadness. I close it and put it back in the drawer, but I feel it again - the wound I have grown into. Mostly an itchy scar these days. But now and then I am drawn up short and I remember it wasn't always this way.

It won't always be this way.

You are so very good at reminding me that this is for a season. I, like a tempermental child, announce with accompanied soul-stomping that I don't want this season - it is too long. Don't seasons usually change more frequently? My words do not help either of us and so I am ashamed. This is our place for now and I am not very accepting of uncomfortable things. I never have been.

I was thinking of something today. Something I wrote in a letter many years ago to a friend who was enduring a difficult providence - and for some reason the words came back to me today. I told her, "He only does that which is necessary to accomplish His purposes and no more."

So this is our necessary. I will not shirk from this time, although, I do wish it away now and then.

Mostly now.

Okay - I might shirk for awhile. But mainly I hold the ground I must.

I miss you so. I miss your funny ways and your inappropriate comments and big hugs and how it's okay when it's just okay. I miss hearing you snore and your laugh.

God, you know how much I miss his laugh.

I miss us.

And I continue to pray for the necessary to be completed in us quickly.