changes

Hello, it's been a while and I'm posting this around to livejournal and myspace and whatnot to explain why (but in a very vague way).

A lot has changed in the last few weeks.  The most important thing I've taken away from these changes is that I've stopped trying to make sense of them.

I realize that I am not even in a position to determine whether these changes are good or bad for me, because right now I am too close to them.  The overall impact that these changes will have on my life might not even be apparent for several months or even years.  It's impossible to see how one event can spark a whole chain of events, or to see why people come in and out of our lives when they do.  Things that seem good or bad right now can be viewed in a very different light through that lens called hindsight.  I find this most often happens with what we, at the time, deem "unfortunate events" but later end up leading us to much greater happiness.  On the other hand, things that seem like blessings at the time can end up resulting in sorrow.

Basically, we can't know what the overarching impact of any one event will be in terms of the entire scope of our lives.  One little thing can nudge us onto an entirely new path of existence.   I have seen this both in my own life and in the lives of those around me.  My mom left her last job feeling like she had lost out on something... but her next endeavor proved to be the best yet and has made her far happier than if she had stayed where she was.  My ex-husband ended up joining the military based on a chain of events that began with a car accident and a chance trip to the library.  Recently, a friend has re-entered my life who I have missed greatly.  When our lives diverged, I was very sad but now I see that this time apart was in fact a great thing and our friendship is better for it -- we both had things to go and learn, and we needed to do these things on our own first.

I guess what I'm saying is: I can't see into the future.  I don't know how these things will turn out.  It will be a long time before I can look back and say, "Hey, that actually ended up being a good thing" or "Wow, this is exactly how it needed to work out -- everyone ended up where they were supposed to be."  I just have to have faith that I will indeed end up where I am supposed to be and that, in the meantime, I have a lot of strength to get me through.  And I know where that strength comes from. 

Last night I started reading Richard Preston's The Wild Trees.  It's about the redwoods, the largest trees in the world.  It quiets something in me to read about trees on this continent that are two or three thousand years old.  Scientists haven't drilled into their cores to determine exact ages by counting rings because this wouldn't give them the information they need.  The reason for this is that the trees have grown so massive and expanded outward so much that they are actually hollow at the center.  I wish I could stand in the center of one somehow.  I imagine it must be incredibly peaceful.

I feel like the events of the past few weeks have just stripped away even more layers of the superfluous things I have been working to get rid of.  It kind of hurts, but I feel like I am being scrubbed clean.  I feel a bit like Jilly in Charles de Lint's The Onion Girl -- peeling away, peeling away, and knowing that there is something Good at the core, the heart, the center.  And that maybe, like a redwood, I am also growing upward & outward.