Walking Away from a Locked Door

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks mainly because my husband and I bought a "fixer upper," and we have been spending every spare moment unpacking, renovating, and just trying to keep life going in general.

Today, I said goodbye to our first home, a little third-floor apartment on main street, a sunny little nook above an alterations shop in our small city.

Today I said goodbye to the first place of which I was mistress, the first place in which I got to set the tone for how the atmosphere felt when people entered the space, the first place I knew what it meant to be wife and the first taste of what it would be like to be a mom. Tears and laughter rang through the house and lingered with the smoke stains from a fire we had one month after our wedding day.

These walls knew a depth of sorrow and confusion, the coming to terms with my mental health disorder, and the fight for sanity and purpose after loss, rejection, and perceived or real abandonment.

These walls held the hopes and dreams of a little girl realized in the warm conversations of friends and relatives gathered round breakfast casseroles and stuffed turkeys.

And now it was time to say goodbye. I held the silver key in my hand, and I realized that there were some things within these walls, secrets hushed amidst the dark recesses of these closets that I didn't want to carry with me to our new home.

And so, I knelt down before the bay windows in the gleaming sunlight and with open hands, I gave these memories to God. No longer to feel the weight of how others may view me. No longer to be defined by the mistakes I had made within these walls, to sharpen my dedication and commitment to pursuing God despite what anyone else may think, what anyone else may define me as. To know that today is a new day with a deepening purpose.

I turned the key, silver and tiny, in the lock and it clicked matter-of-factly. And I walked away.