Guided by Her Light

I am definitely in the messy middle. I can feel that I’m not where I started, but I also know I’m nowhere near the end.

Lately, it feels like every day something comes to me like a lightbulb going off in my head. Which sounds very profound until I picture myself as Albert Einstein standing there with an actual lightbulb over my head. 😂

But that’s kind of what this season of my life has been like. One realization after another. Some are painful. Some make me laugh at myself. Some make me wonder how the hell I didn’t see them before. And some just lead to more questions.

I have fewer angry days now. That’s progress, I guess. But what surprised me is what came after some of the anger started fading. Sadness.

Not necessarily sadness over the past, either. Don’t get me wrong, I did my fair share of dwelling there. Apparently my brain eventually decided we had reviewed that material thoroughly enough and moved on to a new department: dwelling on the future. 😂

I spent almost 30 years building a life with someone I thought would be there forever. More than half of my life was spent believing I knew what my future looked like. And then suddenly, I didn’t.

I think that’s what I’ve been mourning more than anything lately. Not necessarily the life I had, but the life I thought I was going to have.

I had a picture in my head of what this part of my life would look like. Our kids getting older. Their milestones. Holidays. Maybe marriages and grandchildren someday. All of those ordinary moments I just assumed we would experience together because, for almost 30 years, that’s what I thought my life was going to be.

I don’t think I realized how attached I was to that picture until it wasn’t mine anymore.

And that’s a strange thing to grieve. How do you mourn something that never actually happened? How do you miss a future you never got to live?

I don’t have the answer to that yet. Apparently that’s why I’m here. 😂

Somewhere in all of this, I’ve also had to start figuring out who I am now. That’s a strange question to ask yourself when you’ve already been yourself your entire life. 😂

I know I’m not the same person I was. Honestly, I don’t think I’m supposed to be. Life changes us. People change us. Loss changes us. Sometimes we choose the change, and sometimes life makes the decision for us.

Who I am is not who I was. And who I will be is still under construction.

Maybe that’s the part I’m finally starting to understand. I don’t have to know exactly who I’m going to be yet. I don’t think any of us are ever completely finished anyway. I’ve told my son that when you stop trying to be better, you stop growing. We should never stop growing or striving to be better.

So maybe being under construction isn’t such a bad place to be.

My goal now is to spend less time mourning the future I thought I was going to have and more time creating the future that’s actually in front of me. I want to believe some of my best days haven’t happened yet.

I know that’s easier to write than it is to actually do. There are still days when I look backward. There are still questions I don’t have answers to. There are still moments when I miss the picture I had in my head. I’m learning that moving forward doesn’t necessarily mean those things disappear.

The other day, I was thinking about all of this and meant to say maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, I accidentally said maybe there’s a light at the bend of the tunnel.

At first I laughed because, well, apparently I can’t even get my inspirational sayings right. 😂 But then I thought about it.

Maybe I don’t need to see the end of the tunnel yet.

Maybe I just need enough light to make it to the next bend.

And for now, I think that’s enough.