The explosion has gone off and slowly I’m being pieced back together, bits of me that remained from before have been glued back on, sometimes in strange places. New pieces are forming in the shape that makes up me and as I slowly rise to my feet and look around I notice I’m in a strange new land. I appear to still be some form of Kath but this land is new. This land is very different from before. People come and go, they visit me here and we remain friends but this landscape has altered.
The view is no longer here. There is no vast horizon before me. There is only forest. As far as the eye can see, forest. Trees dappled in light as the sun shines through the leaves but this is all I can see. This glade in the forest. I sense that there might be paths to and from the glade, how else did the others get here? I can’t make them out yet. All I can see are trees, trees and more trees.
Like the old adventure computer game that me and my brother used to play I sense there are exits North, South, East and West and that someday soon I might venture out of this glade. But for now my horizons are limited. Today is all I have, this moment is all I have. Time shifts and I can’t conceive of a land beyond right now. I’m surrounded.
I’m not sure how to interact with the world I used to know, is it still there? Am I still me? What do people see when they look at me now? My soul lives still in a world which knows pain and struggle and yet I look like I have it all, do people turn from me thinking I’ll never understand? Have I received the label of ‘mother’ and so my life is assumed from now on? Questions threaten to undo me. Fears swirl around and I cling tightly to the one who dwells with me still in this forest. Immanuel is here. The word has become flesh and made his dwelling amongst us, he’s moved into the neighborhood and the darkness does not know what to do with him. He is my identity, my rock, my fortress. The one who teaches me how to live in this strange new world, to push past the perceptions and love those around me well even in the midst of this narrowed horizon world.
Your correspondent, as ever writing to remind herself of some big fat truths and figure out just what is going on in her head.
The Long Walk Home 
Yup. It felt very war-zoney in the first few weeks and months for me. I like your forest metaphor. You won’t be in there forever, the paths will clear, I promise. (when he goes to school, if not before…) And the ones who look like they’ve got all their maps sorted and have climbed a mountain before breakfast? Cheating, somehow. Not sure how.
Enjoy your camping in the forest with Immanuel. This too shall pass.
Sending you much love xx
Thanks lovely 🙂
I’ve always said that after the first six weeks I changed my mind and decided my son could stay! Then after the next six weeks I began to see how, in theory, this might work (even if it still wasn’t yet). Then after six months it began to work. Mostly! Now he’s a teenager, and his sister isn’t far behind. Now there are new paths to be explored. The ones that make me want to gulp down every precious moment with these growing young adults before they do what we’ve been preparing them for all this time – begin to explore their own paths.
For me, as the years have gone by, I realise I never lost who ‘I’ was before my children were born (though it did feel like it for a time). I realise I added ‘mother’ to who I already was. That was an extraordinary gift my children gave me.
Take your time in the forest with Immanuel, your husband, and your boy. Something beautiful is being formed.
Thanks so much for the encouragement, good to know I’m not alone in these feelings 🙂
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