A WAGON, FULLY LOADED

I love organization. I love feeling settled and grounded when everything around me is neat, clean, and orderly. It just seems to make life easier. I am really not OCD with it, well, I don’t think I am anyway, because all too often I am not so neat, clean, and organized. Although, I definitely prefer it over all things cluttered and messy.

On my journey with a prodigal daughter, I have not been in control of the arranging or rearranging of the contents of my wagon. They get bounced and jolted around and I cannot sort, move, or discard them. What is on the top today, out in full view may get sifted to the bottom tomorrow, not necessarily gone, just temporarily unexposed. They are not neatly stacked, labeled, or alphabetized.

There have been days when I have wanted nothing more than to take my overloaded wagon full of unwantedness and slam it into a wall. But then realize that I would be hitched (or yoked) to an overloaded, unwanted, and now broken down wagon with its contents completely exposed and scattered out in full view. And, sometimes containment is good.

I mentioned recently that we took our niece to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. Would we have walked through with its lions, bears, elephants, rhinos, snakes, etc. running loose? I don’t think so. Our visit was fun because we enjoyed seeing the animals at a distance with something (a plate of glass or a steel bar) between us and them. Yea, containment was good.

Never once did God overwhelm me by allowing me to peek in and view the contents of my wagon all at once. He knew the exact time to expose them to me and He stayed with me to guide me through the process. I have grabbed each stage of this journey, one by one and spent time with it, cried over it, sorted through it, accepted it, and then moved on.

Some days the traffic gets backed up and I stand still or just inch along. Sometimes I take the wrong turn and revert back. Sometimes I get lost and drive around aimlessly, in circles. In other words some days and weeks I seem to go nowhere, even backwards, but all in all (when I look at the big picture) my journey has evolved. I have seen many mile markers and felt many bumps in the road, and as my heart spills out, it should be a testament to this. In future blogs, I want to go into a little more depth about where I started on this journey and where I am now. It has been a cycle. It has been a challenge. And for the past couple of years, it has been my life. This has been my life:

1. The Initial Shock
2. Denial (Trying to Fix It)
3. Grief
4. Trying To Understand the Hows and Whys
5. Taking Inventory
6. Learning to Love Her “In Spite Of”
7. Healing