...don't know about you, but it's been a weird week in the health category for me. After a wonderful six days in New Mexico celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary surrounding the 18th of March, we came home, and this olde dude immediately succumbed to the harshness of an early and fairly severe allergy season...plus some other concerns. Ugh! It's not been a fun week seeing four different docs...but I'm still breathing. :-)
Making it to some mentoring appointments, but needing to cancel other meetings, I've had some extra ponder time in these curious days...especially tackling the task of foraging back into my personal history over all 7 decades. This remembering back...and hoping forward into the next decade of my life has taken some very important and needed twists and turns.
Remembering, too, some very important times of rich, deep, hard, welcome counseling, from years ago, to even this past year, some thoughts have emerged I've never thought or felt before. Last night I sat in the quiet of our home for awhile after sending the last post...reflecting some more on a book Judy and I began reading on our time away.
She read while I drove. We had interludes of very important personal conversation between us. Those were welcome times on the road.
The book is titled Primal Wound. Though it was written years ago by a caring woman who had an adopted daughter who wanted to understand deeply the process of growing up adopted...and being an adoptive parent...her wisdom, thoroughness, and insights in her writing makes this an extra meaningful book. However...we soon realized in the reading that this book is not just about the feelings and experiences of adoption.
The core prinicples shared and what one is encouraged to ponder fit anyone who has, frankly, any kind of abandonment experience...from slight to severe. It is a nourishing book...not just for oneself...but for others you and I know.
OK...back to last night's time of quiet before sleep. Looking through the few pictures of my childhood I found these two: one with me and the family; one of me with me with a brother who was killed when I was 8 (that story will be shared later, as well). My parents in that pic were in their early 40s. My sister was 20 years older than me...my brother 16 years older. There we are...smiling nicely...for the moment, happy
This second picture I stared at for a long time...a very long time. I never knew that man...my brother. The little I know of him I just wrapped up in family facts...part of our family story...just like you have yours.
But last night, as I stared at that picture of the two of us...I shed tears, for the first time, ever, over not knowing him. Grief squeezed my heart over the loss of him. That surprised me...in a deep and sacred sense.
It was by divine appointment last evening, as I sat in that silence and wondered what life would have been like for him...for his precious wife and daughter (my first neice who arrived two months after he was killed...I got to be an uncle at 8yo)...for my parents, my sister and all the others who knew him then. What would it have been like to have known him as a brother...even though this year he, had he lived, would be turning 86?
There was a deep, quiet, clear release within me that has probably been waiting for years to be let go. Now, by divine deisgn was the time. Those were moments I believe I've been needing on my continuing journey. ...tonight, I still sit here quietly looking at that picture...........
That has me wondering about you, too, the unknown reader...and about other friends I know and value. Are there places in your life of which you need to let go...or reclaim?
Whether you were abandoned or the abandoner...whether you were the one who hurt another or were hurt...where do you still need to be set free? If an olde man chasing 70yo can be in the process of doing that...I'm confident you can too.
We were all meant to live free. We were designed to live free...no matter what has taken place in our lives. I choose freedom...as often as I need to keep choosing. Though I will not know all who read this...I sincerely pray the same for you.
(.....................to be continued.....................)
I'm listening Wes.
Posted by: Anj | March 30, 2012 at 10:39 PM
Thank you for writing and sharing this.
I love you and am sorry for your loss.
Posted by: Shannon | March 31, 2012 at 10:32 AM
You are blessed with much ... among which is a fantastic memory. I am already blessed for having just encountered you at Duluth First UMC this past weekend, without having introduced myself. Thank you.
Posted by: Annette Adams | April 30, 2012 at 12:04 PM