Moving Day

Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day. I’m heading to my former home to start packing up my things. I know what you’re thinking, “I thought you’ve been working on this divorce for a while, why are you just now getting your things?” Here’s the thing – I’ve been avoiding this for as long as I possibly could. I guess in my mind, I thought I could put it off long enough that it wouldn’t end up happening. Let me tell you – I thought wrong. 

This divorce has been quite difficult for me as I’m sure you can imagine. Maybe you can even relate. It has been made even worse by the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic because I can’t even turn to my regular go-to places for comfort or to clear my head. 

I can’t go to church. 

I can’t go to shopping centers. 

I can’t go to friends’ houses. 

I can’t go to Sephora!!!

I’m currently living in my parents’ house, and while I do have a nice room, and I’m thankful to have a roof over my head, I feel like I’ve gone back in time to the ripe old age of sixteen. In fact, I’m living amongst stuff that belonged to sixteen year old me. I look around this room and I wonder how I’m going to get out of this rut, and how in the world I am going to start over. 

Let me tell you right now, because I have to get this off my chest – I was a fully functioning adult before the divorce. I have a home that was mine. I work. I have been on my own for a long time, and as a military spouse I was quite literally on my own for months at a time. I’m just living at my parents’ house right now because I can’t get a place until we split assets and all that craziness. I’m still in the middle of this divorce. I feel icky about my current situation – I can’t help it, and so I feel the need to surround my stories with disclaimers such as this one. 

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program…

I’m about to head to my house (I still think of it as my house) to empty it of anything that belongs to me, and start bringing it all back to my room at my parents’ home as well as a storage unit that I’ll need to get in the meantime. There are also a lot of decisions to be made. What will we do about the furniture? How are we going to split items that belong to both of us? What about the little mementos that we bought over the years – the caricature of both of us – the framed engagement photo – the special Christmas ornaments…I could go on and on.  

The splitting of items is one of the reasons I’ve had a hard time facing this. I can’t bear the thought of looking at that stuff and trying to fathom how to discard it, save it, or split it. It’s not the physical items really – it’s the memories behind them. I can’t just box those up and haul them to storage for another time. They are littering my mind constantly. And I honestly don’t want to face it at all. 

How do you face something you don’t want to do? How do you put your big girl pants on and go ahead and muscle through the pain? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ll try not to at first. You’ll avoid the situation, pretend it’s not happening, and hope it goes away. But stuff like this never does. At some point it’s time to deal with it. It has to be done. So, how do you take that first and second and eventually final step?

One thing I’ve learned is that within my own power, it’s going to be very difficult – in fact, it could be impossible. But, the good news is, I don’t have to do it alone. God will be there every step of the way. He promises this to us in His word. 

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18, NIV

This verse has become extremely important to me as I go through this #divorcelife. 

It’s what I think about whenever I make a difficult phone call to my soon to be ex. 

It’s what I remind myself when I think about past memories – the good ones that I miss and still long for, and the bad ones that make me sad. 

It will certainly be what I think about tomorrow morning as I start the long drive from my parents’ house to my former home. 

What I cling to as I start the process of packing away the life I once lived, and what will bring me hope as I look for the silver lining in the future that is to come. God promises me that He is with me, and He will save me, and with that, I can face anything.