Every Thought Captive: In the Threshold

Time. It is always moving and taking me with it. It is putting something before me, and then whisking it away just as I am living it, pushing me forward to what has been built on the doings of the past. It is sifting life as sand through my fingertips…there, and then gone.

Sometimes it seems I find my rest, not in that coveted moment where lists are dissolved and one is free to absorb the stillness, but in that minute between one thing done and another to do, like the breath between one line of a song and the next; the pause after lifting the hammer off the nail before slamming it down once again...or that brief moment when you have swung high in your swing, and can catch a glance of the ground below, before in one rushing sweep you fly down over the earth and up into the air on the other side…

Though these pauses between one thing and the next may appear brief outwardly, inwardly, I embrace them deeply. I am one great big pause inside. I am in a state of continual reflection, moving mental pictures from my heart’s camera to its scrapbook, and clearing the space for new pages, new seasons, a new home, and a new way of living.

Inside I am made up of the collaboration of life at 6 and 12, 15 and 19. I am the girl who loved frilly, flowery dresses and spun in circles in the church foyer before hopping up the stairs and letting the rush of heat from the rattling heater blow through my hair. I am the girl who collected stickers and raced horses with my brother through the bean field on bareback; the one who burnt garlic bread and made brownies out of box mixes way too often. I am the girl who got lost driving alone and called home in tears, was a secret spy agent, played Monopoly and Clue, and tried to get stuck in the muddy field with big boots on just for fun. I rode bikes twelve miles with siblings just to buy fountain pop at the gas station, and ran outside at the first blush of spring to breathe in the freshness of life beginning, as the sound of birds returning filled the air.

Somehow those days are all memories now, the house is quiet, and I am surrounded by flowers, packages, dresses, and countless wedding advertisements. I am brought out of my reminiscing by the glittering of the ring on my finger and I smile…I have been loved at home, but I am not leaving to a place that is less desirable or wonderful…the 21 years I have spent here will, Lord willing, be only a fraction to the years I will spend with a man who loves me to the very core of his being, and will be with me forever as I reference them in my mind’s eye.

Sometimes, though, this place of in-between tears at my heart. I am in the threshold of two homes…both who want me, both who love me, and both who need me. Saying goodbye to this home I love weighs heavy with feeling, and does not come without tears, but I find comfort and joy in the knowledge that by letting go of all that has colored the word “home” for me in years past, I am being embraced with a future full of hope, gladness, and laughter, by a man who is vowing to love me till death do us part.