Joyful Ruins

“How do you move on? You move on, when your heart finally understand that there is no turning back.”- Tolkien

Written September 2021:

I’ve been stuck. Sickness hit me out of nowhere 4.5 months ago. Sin e then, I have struggled to accept my new reality.

I have fought so hard against the state of my body, that I have worn myself out more than I already am.

I refused to accept that this is my story, my adventure, my quest right now. That this season, however long, may mean waking up every day feeling unwell. I do not want this to be my story. Still, I struggle not to fight it.

Yet, I will not learn, grow, find peace or joy if I continue fighting my circumstances.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I sobbed to my mom over the phone, “I just want to go back to normal. I want to go back to when I wasn’t sick, to how things were then.”

There is a similar thing said in the Bible. God has rescued the Israelites from Egypt, parted the Red Sea for them, and lead them into the wilderness. They complain and they tell God they were better off in Egypt.

That seems crazy to us, right? But we do the same thing. Something enters our lives and changes it, so we cling to the way things were.

I truly believe this is a natural part of change, loss, grief. We long for the before and we come to a place where we have to grieve for the loss of the old.

That is why I sobbed on the phone with my mom, among other reasons. I knew I had to let go of the hope things would go back to what they were.

I think Tolkien said it well, “You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.”

It takes time and God’s guidance to understand. It comes in stages and steps, but once we stop holding onto the past, holding onto the desire to go back, we can start to face this new journey with courage, we can stop struggling and start fighting.

God doesn’t chastise us for grieving our old life, but He does not want us to stay there. He is making all things new. The old is gone, the new is come.

It seems to me, that in God’s kingdom, when we let go of the old, we start our journey towards the new He has for us.