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But the grief of leaving good things almost fortifies gratitude and illuminates expectation. There is a knowing that if God has provided all of this goodness and beauty in one location, He can be trusted to journey with us as we stretch and grow into new beautiful friendships in our new home.
The grief I didn't expect is the stinging, searing pain of leaving unfinished dreams and unrepaired relationships.
For the past 12 months, I have experienced burnout, chronic pain, and other symptoms. So, while I have been tending to my needs and learning how to slow-heal, I have had to learn how to allow good things, and even great people, to be put lower and lower on the priority list of my life. It has affected many of my friendships greatly. This has caused a lot of regret and shame to bubble up (as I haven’t had the ability to communicate this well). So, I’m dancing with the tension and discomfort of moving away while some friendships feel unresolved due to my own lack of capacity to be a good friend.
All of my friendships are colored by who I am and who I am not yet - the people that I love deeply will get to experience the benefits of my goodness and they will also get to experience the heartache of how I respond to fear, survival, or threat. To mask this or attempt to control how my dysregulation and lack of capacity affect those that I love would be to show up inauthentically, and it would actually separate me further from myself - keeping me from the necessary low valley of God’s transformative work.
And so, I let discomfort exist in my friendships, knowing that this season will not last forever, knowing that a day will come when I get to take accountability for the ways I have not been present and knowing that there is a deep well of grace for me in God.
I don’t have a pretty bow for this one yet. I’m just naming that sometimes friendships are hard while we’re healing from years of unresolved harm, and we’ve got to accept God’s grace and hope for the desire we have to do more.
Mallory Albrecht
Freedom Coach |
