My how things have changed! On April 18th, the 6th anniversary of our arriving in Florida, I started writing this post to my blog. I have been busy and distracted and figured I would finish it up this weekend since we have three days off for Memorial Day. Guess now is really as good a time as any! In the beginning it was to be about our move to Florida from Alabama and a personal list of all the things I missed about Alabama and all the things I would miss about Florida whenever I left! We always felt we would one day return to Alabama, maybe retire there or eventually we suspected BASS would relocate from Florida to Alabama. WELL, this past week the “eventually” became the “right now” and we are headed back to live and work in Alabama in FIVE MONTHS!!!! Yes, that’s right, five months! I said I was ambivalent and I am but let’s add to that fearful, worried and panicked along with excited and nervous. Those emotions take up about 20% of what I am feeling right now! The other 80% is taken up by sadness…..sadness to be leaving my family here, especially Addy and Annie! When I think if leaving them here I can actually feel my heart tearing into and I don’t know how if this lump in my throat will ever go away! Please God don’t let me spend the next five months crying the ‘ugly cry’!! Please help me be strong and dignified, please!
We came down here to have an adventure; that was what we called it anyway. But right before Mamma died she asked me why I had to move to ‘God-forsaken Orlando’! What do you say to your dying Mother you moved away from, to Florida, two months before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer? I vowed to tell her the truth and I did! I told her there were three reasons (1) I had prayed about it and I felt peaceful knowing this was where God wanted me (2) I felt it was an opportunity for us to become better prepared financially for retirement and (3) and most important….it was our chance to offer Chip the opportunity to make a new life, if he wanted it, and to meet the woman God has chosen for him. At this point, my Mamma – God Bless her said “Your grandchildren will probably be Spanish”!
Riding to work the other morning I was trying to put a positive spin on our new circumstances and I recited these three reasons over to myself and kept asking why now? As clear as anything I ever intended to think on my own, this thought just drifted into my head – “Your mission is accomplished”! Did my heart stop breaking? No! Is the lump in my throat gone? No! Will I stop tearing up every time I dwell on leaving the babies? No! But, I had to put the thought into context with the reasons for it to make more sense. Do I believe God wanted me in Florida? Yes! Am I better prepared for retirement? Yes! Has Chip made a new life for himself and met the woman God chose for him? A resounding YES! People who knew Chip from his past would not recognize this man, this husband, this Father! That is why we came to Florida and from our ‘adventure’ grew a family! How blessed we are!
Due to the seemingly permanent lump in my throat, I have promised myself to think of the positives! Whether Montgomery or Birmingham I will be much closer to Rachael and my Georgia babies! As Rachael put it she will be close enough to come for Sunday dinner if she wants! Growing up I always believed that families should never be so far away from each other they can’t have Sunday dinner together if they choose! Being close to Rachael is the best consolation!
Montgomery or Birmingham; how will I feel without any of my grandchildren being in the immediate area? Ship without a sail, dog without a bone? Originally when I started writing this I was using a quote from Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities”. Never have words so profoundly fit a situation as my last six years and going forward! I will include it at the bottom of this post because I can relate to it all!
Rachael said it best the other day, “It’s all part of the plan”. Gotta be honest, right now I am wallowing in the negative but sometimes you have to do that. The positive will come, I know it will and just like everything else that happens, I will be ready!
Thanks for listening, keep us in your prayers. I think I will be posting more often during the next few months to maybe help keep the edge off a little and minimize the lump in my throat
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
