The Get-Away

I stand at my closet wondering what to take.  After twenty-eight years of marriage we will soon go away together for the very first time and I am giddy as a schoolgirl.

There is a long stretch of life when you are pulled between your children’s needs and your parent’s needs.  Not wanting to short change either, it is easy for your own needs and your marriage to be put on hold.

There is sadness in our nest emptying when it has been such a joy to have it full and lively.  There is certainly an emptiness in my life that was once filled by my parents.  But life is rarely all black or white.  As if to prove my point, rain is falling on the dry, parched earth outdoors.  The sun is hiding behind a blanket of clouds.  Today there is gray, and in the gray I find renewal.  As the fallow earth drinks in the healing moisture falling from the heavens I understand that loss, though painful, also makes room for other things in our lives.  Those other things can help us heal.  I look forward to this time alone with my husband, prepared to drink in every moment.  Prepared for renewal.

(Written in 2013, shared again today in honor of our 33rd anniversary.)