Embracing Change

Embracing Change

Yesterday, our outlet grocery store changed hands.

That 11,000 square foot building housed our apartment that was our first love nest. It was where I burned cornbread and pea soup exploded onto the ceiling. Where my poor husband first witnessed my strange sleep habits, such as trying to convince him there were varmints in the bed.

It was where we had silly squabbles and then made up with a coffee smoothie and a Planet Earth marathon.

Where I draped myself over the box of K-mart clothing I was pricing and wanted to weep, believing I would never have the courage to write again.

Where we began talking about having a family, and we found out I was expecting: me all red-faced and stammering while holding up the positive pregnancy test; him glowing and grinning from ear-to-ear

I almost died in that love nest, when straight-line winds shattered the window of our apartment and sent glass hurtling through the air like knives, slicing into the couch cushions where I’d been writing moments before.

I wrote two and half books in that 11,000 square foot building. I mixed 100 batches of granola. Priced banana boxes crammed with 3,000 canned goods. For three years scoured toilets and wiped down sinks other people had dirtied (but I wore yellow Playtex gloves).

I lost myself in that building, and yet discovered that by surrendering to the fact that my life wasn’t turning out the way I had expected, I found my dreams anew.

My belly bowed with my unborn child and my arms draped with a rainbow of sweaters, I finished packing my Jeep with our belongings and followed my husband’s Jeep out to our land.

Together, we settled into our new love nest, and as our magnum opus grew in my womb, I wrote a story that was so graced in its telling, I knew it needed to be told.

Snow covered the field in front of our mountain home. And as daffodils pushed their way through the frosted crust, it was time for another change; it was time for rebirth again.

We introduced our daughter to the world and trembled, praying we had the ability to nurture her through life’s hardships and to also keep her safe.

For months we were both sleep-deprived and enraptured, as newly born as our newborn child.

And then, suddenly, miraculously, she was one—tugging clothes from her dresser drawers, eating with two hands, and beeping the horn of her “salvage title” Little Tikes car (it came in our store) while giving me her father’s ear-to-ear grin.

Today, the field is a sheet of white outside our home. My daughter slumbers in her bed with her plump, stocking feet thrust through the slats, where I rubbed them until she nodded off and I could spider-walk out the door.

My husband is at our store that is no longer our store. He is moving banana boxes of our belongings, getting us ready for transition.

Though I am scared of change (abhor it, really), looking at what I have written, I realize that if I had not overcome my fear of marriage, I would not have my husband who is both my anchor and my sails.

If I had not overcome my fear of parenting, I would not have a child who nestles beneath my chin and thaws my heart with her breath.

And so, I will not kick against the current of change, but will allow it to sweep over me and direct me in the way I should go.

For a life fully controlled is a life devoid of adventure, and what great stories were ever spawned through that?

Do you kick against change like I do or embrace it?