When I was a child, I had some difficuly when I experienced something new. Nothing anyone would really notice but more internal thoughts and emotions. Once my mom took me to try a new dance studio because she wanted me to be able to grow more in the area of tap. I remember that it was a very nice but older looking studio with small hallways and lots of brick and girls who looked like real ballerinas (to my childhood eyes) stretching in their toe shoes in the hallway. The studio was beautiful and I don't recall anything being bad about the experience it was just different...new...not the cozy familiar blanket of things that I was used to and knew of what to expect. We got in the car to go home and I burst out in tears.
When my older daughter came home from her first day of school, she had her own burst of tears...well a few of them actually. They started in relation to small things but her dad and I knew that it was all the internal emotions that had been churning inside her all day long in a new school with new teachers, new hallways, new classrooms, new kids; all coming to the surface and flowing over. All of her familiar and expected things were gone and in their place so many new things to navigate.
Recently, we went to check out a boy scout troop for our son that happens to meet at our new church. He seemed to have a good time but when we pulled into our at home he started talking about how he hates living on this "stupid island." How he hates the bugs and the hills and all the trees. He decided that camping with boy scouts on Long Island would be a stupid idea because of all the bugs and I explained that camping is done where there are trees and that is where bugs are no matter where you are...not just Long Island. I could tell that he was feeling some of those stresses of things being so different and I explained to him how everything will be new this year but in a year things will begin to be the same as the year before and he will have a new norm so that it won't always feel the way it does now. But also reminded him that because he was so much older when we moved that he has the blessing of a lot of memories from Michigan. We also talked a little bit about how living in different places and having all these new experiences makes you grow too. I told him how proud I am of him in how he has handled all of these changes in his life and how cool it is that he will be such a well-rounded person with all of these different experiences.
Not long after that, I went to my daughter's meet the teacher night and, because my husband had a presentation to give at the Lions Club, I went alone. When I left it was dark out and many memories of leaving my school building and walking out to my car in a dark parking lot to drive home up Groesbeck after my own curriculum nights as a teacher came flashing back to me. All my emotions about change came pouring out in tears on an unfamiliar drive to home.
There's something about making a big change that makes you think differently about the past. Our move to New York has been positive overall. I've been surprised by how easily all the members of our family seem to have adapted to a new home, in a new place, with a new church and new schools. There have been some short-lived grumblings about living in a smaller house or not having sidewalks to ride bikes on but overall things have went smoothly. Yet we ebb and flow between looking forward and looking back.
My conclusive thought about looking back is that the past often has that cozy blanket feel because we know how it all went down. We know that the bad times were survived, questions we once had were answered, and we came out on the other side to where we are now. But when we stand in the present, we have new questions about how things will all turn out. At times that is exciting but more often it is scary, confusing, and overwhelming. I am grateful for the knowledge that I learned during one of those years past that was less like a cozy blanket and more like a burlap sack,which is that; being in God's will is THE best place to be in the present because it causes me to look less at the past with longing for that cozy blanket of familiarity and instead look forward in confidence to the ways I will grow in my relationship with God and how He will use me to share His love in this everchanging world.
