Outrunning My Past

I realized today that I can't find my future while I'm running away from my past.

Life has changed so much since G died - this is true. But I've also been so afraid of facing and embracing all that has happened, that I've made a "clean cut" in some ways.

Especially with the new people I've met and the new community I'm a part of. Just like when we moved away from VA in 2013, I wanted something new. A new identity. For people to know something - anything- about me other than that my husband and I had been suffering for years and he'd had a heart transplant. We tried so hard to leave that behind. To live a normal life. G had a new job! We had a new home! We were pregnant! But heart transplants and trauma and suffering are not things we can leave behind.

Neither is losing a spouse.

I've been trying to figure out what's ahead of me without facing what's behind me. I want to be a "normal" widow (as if that's a thing!), not one who spent 16 years trying to keep her young fiancé and husband alive. I want to have a story of victory, not of defeat. I want to blend in with this new community that has more money and more security clearances and more education - seemingly just more- than me.

I keep conversations light. Stay off of social media. One confide in a few. Not share details. Summarize 10 years of our life with the term "heart transplant" and just act NORMAL.

I don't know what God's going to do with our future, but I am sure he will build it from our past, not despite it. He has purposes in all of it. I need to learn to steward the past in the present. I need to trust that the past mattered. That there were lessons there that needed to be learned and must not be forgotten. That who I am and how I got to this point is an essential part of where God is taking me in the future.

I've been trying to rush toward a future without understanding the past. My past. Maybe a new relationship or a new home or a new town will fix this awful ache? But no. Looking back. Moving forward. Accepting and embracing our story. I don't need something new. I need to face what I've had and what I've been through and what I've lost.

"You can't hurry the future" - Bruno, Encanto