Emotions Trapped Between the Threads

I am moving in a few days, and being the procrastinator that I am I just decided to start packing today. You see, packing for me was going to require going through everything that moved home with me last August that has been abandoned in my empty dining room ever since. No one but me knows why I have left these things abandoned for the last eleven months. No one but me knows the emotion contained in the full boxes that I haven't brought myself to yet touch. For the same reason, there is a five foot by ten foot storage unit just down the road that I pay rent on every month, full of things I haven't touched in two years. This may sound silly, but I truly haven't had the ability to go through this stuff. My things were dumped in these two places in seasons of confusion and pain that I couldn't face. They were placed there to be held until I was ready to deal. They contained emotion and memories that I refused to deal with and instead kept buried. Until today.

This morning at church the message was about healing from the pain we kept buried deep inside. The pain that no one knows about. Oh, the irony. Jamie, my pastor, used the illustration of trying to hold a beach ball under the water. You can hold it down and lay on top of it, but eventually it's gonna pop up and smack you in the face. Yep. And until healing comes, we live in fear and we live trying to control the pain we hide. Yep, again. I consider myself an expert in pain control. But how much easier would it be just to embrace healing instead? How much easier would it be to finally walk through my grief and my pain, and find the Light that heals? The Love that heals? The Truth that heals?

My mother died four years ago. And while it would be so much easier to say that I was over it a long time ago, I would be lying. I have run from grieving for so long. I have held onto the pain, I have held onto that stage of life, and even more inconveniently I have held onto everything that reminds me of her. I have boxes full of everything that causes me to remember, just in case I forget. Today, I think it might be time to let go. Today I realize that people are not contained in stuff, and neither are memories. My memories of when my mom was alive, my memories of happy times (and happy shopping trips) will not be lost if I let go of my material things.

So as I stood in my dining room this afternoon, going through the clothes my friends have been trying to throw out behind my back for years, I realize I am finally ready to let go. And I realize it's ok to let the tears come as I discover the clothes I was wearing the day my mom died, the dress I wore to the funeral, the sweater she bought me that Christmas, or the shoes that she wore before I did. It's ok to be sad, and it's even more ok to throw them in the goodwill pile. Because it's time to grieve, it's time to deal, and most importantly it's time to let go.