In my Creative Writing class in high school there was a girl who usually had metaphors in her writing concerning driving. I didn't drive in high school--no second car--so I didn't really understand why she'd go back to the circumstance of driving so often. I get it now.
I had my music up, the windows down, and the gas pedal suppressed as I headed to O today. I became slightly lost, but didn't mind because of the saturated God-light slanting down the valley. I ended up passing a house that brought to mind one my family almost rented. It was situated similarly on the plot, with a little 'L' of lawn on the corner facing the street and a stubby black fence. I remembered how, when we'd been trying to find a new place, I'd deeply, deeply wanted us to move to that home because it felt so immensely peaceful. It was a place you'd always know you were safe. I prayed, hard, that we would move there and was more than slightly devastated when we didn't after all. We then found another home instead, and moved in, and I forgot about it.
When I passed that familiar-looking plot today, I thought about how much I'd wanted to live there. I could recall the feeling quite clearly, and I wondered, if we had moved to that place, whether it would have continued to hold the same deep peacefulness I first sensed when we visited. Would it have faded with familiarity or even been altered to something more ordinary as time passed? Either could have happened quite easily.
I don't think I was ready to live in a place like that at the time. The person I was would have altered its ambiance in a way I wouldn't have liked. And as the thought crossed my mind, I felt a small internal sigh of myself accepting that I wasn't in the right place to live there then. I felt love for my old self and my current self embracing who I was, loving that old person and feeling joyful that I hadn't moved in and marred the spirit of that home. I forgave myself for where I'd been. It felt like cool spring air on my soul.
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