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Too much emptiness facing me, like an abyss. I’m staring into a black hole.
It aches, friend. I’m not quite sure what to do, sometimes.
I wish I could wrap back up the years and re-do so many things. It’s not that I don’t take joy in watching my kids grow and helping to launch them… that is a special reward and joy all its own.
It’s just that I will miss it. I feel I have not been mindful enough. I feel regret. I feel grief.
It twists inside, this knife, this dagger of pain.
Like something is lost and is dying. And in a way, yes… it has, it is, it will.
I sip this water, it is bitter, bitter…
Strange taste and strange water.
It isn’t the same. Nothing is. Nothing will be.
And I know this is the way it is supposed to be; that it isn’t supposed to be the same.
It is the way it is meant to be, but all those years I was unwrapping layers and layers of candy… the joy of THEM. Being around them. The gift of THEM.
And why is it that I can only see what I got so caught up in, the daily living of ‘doing’ this or that, the struggle of getting it all done… and how many moments I lost because I was not just in that moment? (And you might be saying to me, or thinking about me- but you homeschooled? Yes, but that does not make me any different…)
I struggled with adversities and obstacles… I found myself stuck between caring for them and simply surviving myself… and that is a different bitter water, another tale, but it is all intertwined, and it swirls together….

I’m sitting here facing the mountain of my past and present and the long tunnel of the future, a thick fog of unknowns.
Will this calcify, indurate the heart… 
I try to protect myself from more of the same. Pain creates ridges. edges. crusty ends. I push back, from the world, from more of the same.
This story is the same, though, all around me, each direction I turn. Each a different chapter. Same story.

This abyss of the past…
I hear a voice saying… child, trust Me… let it go    
I have to let it go
  

Let it fly from hands
Like caged birds
Seeking freedom

Caught between sky and land
We are flying— but trapped in this space 
Between heaven and earth

Seeing their hopes and dreams; seeing their futures unfold; seeing their hopeful eyes; seeing them soar… that gives me joy. God is good, faithful, fulfills promises. He directs the winds, He gives us wings.

They fly… but His hands are underneath.

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release FMF

This week’s Five Minute Friday prompt is “Release”

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(Image sources: Pixabay)

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