“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”       Rainer Maria Rilke

I am living the greatest emotional upheaval of my life. When a catastrophe erupts my every aspect of living, I batten down the hatches and go to ground. The only decision I make as I live the question is to be gentle to myself. I am my own best friend and I seek out refuges for the soul. My soul needs protection and strength during trouble.

Taking naps or rests whenever possible helps me to focus my energy on moving forward. One of the main choices I make is to not “should” myself.  Shoulds are for times when I have excess energy and not for when I am running on near empty. I am reminded of the times when I was young and driving with very little gasoline in a car. I would go down hills in neutral believing this would get me further. So now I try to coast through this trouble.

The love of my life has found another. Will I survive? Of course, but my whole future will be changed. Part of the solution must be the dreaded division of goods. I have decided to let go of mostly everything. I think selling what I have collected will allow me a much better launching pad for my new life.

So I will offer most of what we have to the new couple. This house we’ve both worked on is more his home than mine. It is has two decks on a freshwater canal and I don’t fish. Plus it has a wonderful latticed deck that I rarely use. Better that they have it and enjoy it.

I am quite surprised at this letting go. But I came to this solution slowly and without forcing anything. So I know that this will free up the energy needed to move forward.

God is good and always brings our answers if we surrender to the process. My puny little brain couldn’t have decided this. But I make the biggest choices with my heart. He has been as good a husband as he could be. But our life agendas are completely opposite. No need for me to add to the pain.

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