Growing Pains
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 8:11PM You know how we all experience growing pains? It's just a part of life; we get bigger, and in our growing time the muscles and tendons, all the hidden inside parts, and our skin and eyeballs, and ears, and all of us is stretching and pulling and getting used to itself all over again.
I feel that way about my life right now. I am having growing pains. I don't want to grow up. I told Mike Saturday, during a sadness that I couldn't shake, that I didn't want to be an adult. The next morning I sat in on the 11:00 sanctuary service (it's one of the traditional ones) and the pastor said in the middle of his sermon,"At one point or another adolescents have to learn to be an adult, and being an adult means doing whatever God asks of us, no matter the cost."
Seriously? Yes, seriously. God is seriously in our business, is He not? He knows us in a very particular way. Embarrassingly so, it sometimes feels like.
Like a stubborn child, I have been digging in my heels. I procrastinated with packing to the point that Mike will have to do most of it when he returns from Florida. I have said out loud, to people who ask about our move, how wonderful it is, what a blessing it is for everyone involved (that our friends didn't have to put their house on the market, that we were able to find a house without even really looking, that it is a home that has been cared for and loved) but in my heart I was crying. I don't want to move again. I feel like it was just yesterday that my parents were here walking our furniture around the corner on dollies, driving boxes of dishes around the block, running around town buying towels and shower curtains and regular curtains. And now we have to do it all over again.
I am going to miss a lot about living here. (Not the roaches, mind you, but they seem to be under control at the minute.) The twists and turns of this house, the big, open rooms, the old, warm smell of the wood (it reminds me of my grandma's upstairs in the summertime). I'll miss how close we are to the church. I'll miss the lovely neighborhood we live in. I'll miss living four blocks from Chick-Fil-A.
If I'm being very honest, I would have to say that there are a lot of things about this house that drive me totally crazy. It has a lot of characteristics that annoy me to no end. But, I have come to think of it as home, just in time to have to say that is no longer our home.
I have been thinking a lot about how weird I am with houses. I've never really been happy in any of our homes. Of course, early on we always knew we weren't staying in this or that particular place for very long, so there wasn't a strong attachment. The last three houses, however, I have been a malcontent for the entire time we lived there, until the end of our time in said house, at which point I longed to stay there forever. Or at least a little while longer.
The truth is, though, that deep down no place feels like home. I think it's in part because I keep holding on to this small hope that we will move back to the East Coast, much closer to my parents, and Mike's family, too. I haven't said goodbye to my childhood in some ways. I haven't grown up.
Now instead of being just someone's daughter (two someones, in fact), I am a wife and a mother. Mike and I have a family and I am just now really realizing that it is my responsibility to be the wife and mother in this family. I have felt for a long time like I was a kid playing "grown-up". I am not a kid, though. I am an adult, with responsibilities. People depend on me for stuff!
That's hard, dude! I'm good at being selfish, but not so good at being, genuinely, unselfish.
This has been all over the place, I'm afraid. What I'm trying to get at is that with this move, buying a house, with a plan to stay here for, possibly, the duration of the rest of Eliana's childhood, I am forced to get real with myself. I can't keep thinking,"We'll go home one day." I have to start thinking,"How can I make this our home?" I have to grow up.
And it hurts. The stretching and pulling...hurt.
I suppose in the end we have to do it, though. Just like we can't say to our bodies,"Stop stretching! You're hurting me!" we can't tell our lives to stop changing because we want things to stay the way they are, or even go back to the way they were. It just isn't healthy.
And so the last few days I have been sad, and I have been crying, and I hope that as I mourn the fact that this chapter of our life is coming to an end, I can still find joy that the book has not come to an end. Indeed, there is another chapter. And hopefully many more after that.
Maybe minus the changing of where the scenes are taking place, though. That would be really great.
Reader Comments (8)
This wasn't "all over the place", I totally get it. When I left my home of 20 years it was a temp thing for a 1 year school and I left my bedroom exactly as it was. For 10 years it stayed that way and I kept thinking I'd be going home and felt temporary every place else.It didn't help that Todd and I lived in 8 rentals for the first 10 years of our marriage. It's also hard to think of myself as the adult. As the baby of the family growing up, I realize today that I automatically ascribe every adult I interact with as the "older person" even if they are 10 years my junior! I know that isn't exactly what you meant, but it's what I grabbed onto in your version. Thanks for sharing your struggles, I get you!
It so hard to make yourself feel settled when you have that pull to be closer to family! We've been saying we want to get closer to family for years now but are waiting on God's timing. We'd love to buy a house, but we don't know where God will ultimately want us. Those grown up decisions are daunting when you're giving up control! I constantly feel like I'm a kid playing a role in a grown-up's body!
You're awfully deep today Mrs. Walker. :) I have felt everything you're saying here though I've never said it as eloquently. I do hate moving so much though! I really feel for you!
"I have come to think of it as home, just in time to have to say that is no longer our home."
This post reminds me of the scripture that talks about groaning for our true home... may we never get so content, so comfortable, so in love with the smells, the entrapments... that we stop groaning for home. There is a reason that we are constantly comparing, constantly in a state of wanton desire of something more... It is that hole in our heart that connects us to our Father, and that hole He can only fill. The sin nature sucks, but keep persevering! He is worth it and He is MIGHTY TO SAVE.
"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself." -phillipians 3:20-21
I have a contentment issue too. It's a hard one to work through.
I am having a hard time facing the fact that I have to grow up, too.
growing up is hard. moving is hard. but maybe you'll end up loving it. I hope you have a very merry christmas!
Oh sister, do I ever feel ya on the sadness about multiple moves. I am so so so over moving. And I know I have at least one more in my very near future. It took me a long time to feel really at home in Calgary and then when I was finally submitting to God and saying, "This is my home. I will live here forever," God moved us... And He answered my prayers and moved us back home! But there are still sadnesses. It miss my friends (who were more like family) back in Calgary! I guess each time I move I find more and more that I long to live with all of these people at once -- heaven! Though I'm not quite ready for that move just yet!!
It's so hard. And even now we are having to trust God at every turn in ways that a few years ago we felt "secure" in. God is reminding me daily that we were always this dependent upon Him. We just didn't feel it so keenly.
I agree. Growing up hurts. But pain is good when it comes right down to it.