letting go

It's time to let go. Oh, I'd already rid myself of the old love letters and photos--well, most of the photos. There were a couple tucked in back of one of my Bibles and stashed in the middle of a huge pile of unsorted snapshots. And then there were copies of cards I wrote--one to his sister, one to him. The first card to ask his sister to be there for him during our divorce. The second card to let him know I would always love him.

When the pastor set up the dumpsters three weeks ago in various locations, I knew the photos had to go. So this morning, I pulled them out and set them aside. Next came the journal I started writing to him when our marriage was in trouble. And the journal I kept when I had the compelling urge to become a mother, after years of saying I didn't want children.

I also went to the living room cabinet to pull out the scrapbook I kept from 1995 through 1997; through separation, re-union, and divorcing. It is a big scrapbook, filled with cards and letters from family and friends--so many! Quiet tears flowed as I soaked in the memories of those who walked with me and held me up and kept me alive--literally--when I could not stand on my own. It reminds me of the invisible cloak from the movie "Crash". Love was the invisible cloak.

Today is the last day of Project Freedom, and I will journey to the dumpster to lay these items to rest. It's not like I think about them anymore, but like dust mites, they are in my house and need to be cleaned out.

I am now living a dream that God had for me. It is so much bigger and so much better than anything I tried to hold on to when I was married to him. God has turned His dream into this reality: I am now married to a man who loves me for my imperfect, occasionally-annoying self--a man who thinks that I am good for him. I have more children than I dreamed possible--the "loaners" (my friends' children), my three stepsons and their wives, Noah, my little Girls on the Run. I am more and more the woman that God created me to be.