Seasons

I had a great conversation tonight, sitting at a bar. It was an after-dinner girl to girl chat that reverberated in a few places that my mind keeps coming back to.  It hit on topics that bridge past the quarter-life identity crisis and into the haunts of a thirty-something who's really now supposed to be a grown up. 

For the sake of anyone who may not be familiar with the circumstances of my life over the last decade, I'll offer the liner notes.  For eight years I lived out of a suitcase about half of the year somewhere around the United States or the World.  My coworkers became my friends and, many times, filled in for my family.   Long story simplified... things change, and when they change at a record company in Mobile, Alabama, there's no record company across the street to jump to.   People move to another city or they just move on.  And nearly everyone I relied upon for almost 10 years left while I became a mommy.

There's no sob story here... just that I've had to start over in a new city that has roots as deep as the trees are tall and whispers just as loud as the breeze through their twisted limbs.  And as I wade into new relationships... some of them totally new, some of them aquaintances that I can either keep status quo or pull closer... it's more clear to me that friendship is, in fact, a gift.  Among many things, it can be a valuable gift of reflection, and I'm so grateful for the healthy glimpses I've gotten over the past few months.  I've had the chance to recognize that I've been in shock and have been hiding under a pile of diapers for fear of starting all over again.  But start again, I must.

It's true what they say about getting older... you do grow wiser.  And usually that wisdom is incredibly hard won.  But as my soul ages along with this skin I'm in, I've got to choose to see the spots as beauty marks and the scars as experience.  Just as I've had to embrace a the whiplash of moving from the speed of flight to the sometimes tedious speed of an infant, I'm learning to be a more careful study of character over purpose.  And just as I've learned that the uprooting my life sent me into a proverbial shock, if I recognize the roots that matter have been left intact, I know that it's taken time, but I will recover.    

Seasons change, but they always revolve and build upon one other.  For the first time in three years, I can see that I've just been through a long winter, but I see the signals that are only recognized by faith and experience... another spring is just ahead.