Walking Away and Walking Towards

A little over a month ago I posted a one-line blog post about dreams.  At the time, I was just beginning to have revelation about what it would mean to move on from my life here in Tacoma and on to something else.

The last week or so, however, the tangible reality of this has struck me.  I have started giving some of my things away. There's a very real possibility my car could sell sooner rather than later. My mortgage company has almost completed their loan modification so that I can rent my house.  The chance to leave the life I have known for a different life is starting to be more than just a dream and is becoming a very concrete reality.

This has been harder than I thought it would be.

My stuff is just stuff.  My house is just a thing.  But the truth is that these things are physical representations of dreams that just might have to die for me to move on.

When I bought my house it needed work done both inside and out.  As I lovingly picked out tile for my counter top I had visions of all of the meals I would make in the kitchen for my family someday.  When I drilled hundreds of screws into the deck I added in the back yard, I dreamed of family dinners sitting out there in the summer sun.  Each season as I have walked around my yard, pruning and planting and weeding, I wondered what it would look like three, five or ten years from now as the plants I have painstakingly put into the ground reach their full size.  At night as I have gone to sleep stroking the soft fur of my purring cat, it has been with dreams of holding my own child someday; the cat helping to fill the void of physical affection in my life.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the life I've been leading and the dreams I have been dreaming.  Yet, there is a real possibility that I will be walking away from these things within the next year.  I am realizing the likely chance that not a single one of those dreams will come true.  I am walking toward something, which is at the same time walking away from something.

Honestly, there is a part of my heart that is breaking over this and I there is a dull ache in my chest, on the verge of tears at all times.  As I walk around my house I think of all of the work and love put into it and wonder if the next people who live there will care as much as I do, or hope that whoever gets my cats will love them the way I do.  The pain of leaving these things behind is harder than I thought.

And so I am trusting.  I am trusting that by letting go of these dreams that I have held on to, that there will be something even bigger, and even better for me and that I will not be disappointed. It's not easy, but it's all I can do.
Erin