How long does it take before the rubble in our lives become familiar?
I drove past the old mill site today. I drive past it every day… several times a day. Today I slowed down and pondered the debris. There is a thought that quickly enters and exits my mind each time:
When will they clear the rubble away?
What are they waiting for? It made sense that they took their time picking through… recycling scrap metal… salvaging one hundred and twenty year old wood… stacking good bricks onto pallets and shuffling pallets into neat rows. Selling off the valuables first… but now… now it’s nothing but piles of concrete and cinder block. . piles of wood chips… piles of asbestos. TRASH… sorted.. separated… but ALL TRASH.
Refuse with no value… littering the landscape… worthless waste from bygone ways. When will they take it away? Where will they take it to? Where CAN it go? A hole in the ground? How is that any better place than where it currently lies?
I am so familiar with the sight and yet this familiarity does not breed fondness. It is like a corn on my heel… a crack in my palm… a pimple on a particularly tender place. Uncomfortable familiarity.
Today my mind is drawn to the debris in my mind… rubble in my relationships. Baggage, we call it. Eleven years I’ve been married and yet it seems like such a short time to have little piles of refuse between us. Habits we have fallen into… buttons that are so easily pushed.
Sometimes we are hot, on fire… raging mad. Sometimes frigid, freezing cold. The cold times never last long but this warm-blooded woman, does not weather them well. I don’t think he does either. Like any good southern girl, I’m ready for spring.
I spent years sorting through my own rubble. Picking through… looking for valuables, all the while trying to rebuild my life, in the strength of the Repairer of Broken Walls. I realize now that he and I spent sometime tearing down the very wall we were trying to build…
Now I stare at this pile of stones. There IS so much debris here! How can we rebuild this section of the wall? This pile of refuse has become uncomfortably familiar. We walk around it… skirt it carefully. We act as if it’s radioactive.
When will we take it away?
Where can we take it?
Where can it go?
Love, I don’t think we can…
Thankfully we know ONE who can. I think just have to be willing to surrender it.
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