There seems to be an
endless amount of boxes to be unpacked here in my new home. Living abroad in
various locations has helped the amount of stuff being kept from reaching
insurmountable amounts (due to baggage limits), yet still I find I’ve managed
to accumulate just a few things from those seasons of my life as well. And now
is time to really unpack and find space.
I’ve found photo
albums from years back in the
pre-digital days, when we’d develop the photos and have the excitement of
seeing how they turned out after the obligatory couple of days of “waiting for
them to be ready” at the photo shop (as in a physical shop rather than a
picture editing computer programme). And as I’m finding these things I am being
reminded of stories. So many stories which I’d forgotten, but that hadn’t
vanished. They were safely stored away in memory ready to be unpacked by a
photo or something familiar.
Stories. What to do
with stories? I’d love to write a book some day; a way of putting on paper and
collating a few (because it would be too much to write them all) of the many
crazy and less crazy things I’ve seen and lived in and through. I tell some of
them at times... wrestling with the urge to start telling “it all” when someone
asks a question that unplugs the stream of memories from a certain time. Yet
knowing that if I tell too many details I will soon be met by the glazed-over
look which indicates that the person has disconnected. And so I am constantly
having to figure out varying versions of the very-much-abbreviated-trying-to-say-it-in-a-minute
summary to fit the audience. It’s a skill I am developing quite well I believe.
Stories. Some stories
are the figments of peoples’ imagination; telling us the journeys of complex
characters, whose lives touch our lives and draw us into their reality and
story. And yet they are not real and never were. And at the end of the book or
film their lives will not go on.
My stories are
different. They are stories of when my journey intersected with other peoples’
journeys and we travelled together. Some just for a moment; others for larger
chunks of time. And during that time we ended up impacting the other in some
way.
As I sort through my
boxes, all containing parts of my life, I am finding things I’d forgotten
about; old diaries, letter and cards from others, little decorative things I
used to treasure, African salad servers, and so much more. Each attached to a
season. Each attached to a distant memory. Each representing a time in my life.
As I encounter these memories I find it does something to my heart. Sitting
here I find myself longing to be back in those times. Times of joy. Times
representing the goodness of life. Life
is still good, and yet being in a time of not being settled yet, there is a
tension between the being here now and wishing I was back to a more stable season. A season of feeling settled, at home, knowing my place, and being in a flow
of life.
It will come. I know
it will. But I’m not quite there yet.
It takes time. It
always does. Time to settle. Time to find who I am here. Time to find what life
is. And so I let go. Let go of trying to make myself settle. Let go of trying
to figure out how it all fits together; the what has been and the now and the
memories and the present. And while I unpack my boxes I choose to be thankful
for having been allowed to live the many amazing moments each memory represents,
and I allow the unpacking and remembering to become part of this leg of the
journey. And in that I encounter a place of peace.