reclaiming what was lost.

We have been going through our tornado-please-don’t-open-that-door of a garage. It had become the massive over flow from the house and it was out of control. It happens so fast doesn’t it? One month the garage is all clean, swept and the Christmas tree stand is in the corner and the next month there is 63 bags for the dump and a sprawling mess of broken toys, broken bikes and broken limps if you even try to enter without the light on.
Once the garage was tackled in a somewhat reorganized fashion, my husband set to work on the garden/compost/alley way. I will try to describe the situation to you. On the back side of our house there is the fenced yard on one side and then through the gate is a sloping driveway to the garage. Well, on the other side of the driveway is a cyclone fenced ‘garden area’. The 88 year old woman who lived here for the fifty years before we moved in had this 4×30 fenced space filled with veggies and rhubarb and raspberries and deliciousness.

We have turned it into a kids mud pit/ghetto sandbox, and then most recently, the catch all for the yard debris when my husband went to town and started lopping down tree’s in our yard. It is great to hold yard waste because it is fenced in and it doesn’t then fall in the neighbors gorgeous lilies.

But then behind the garden fenced area, there is a three foot high cement blocked square for compost. But we mostly just put dead Christmas trees there.

Until this past weekend when Jeremy was reclaiming the space. While he was digging around, quite literally, we found these two awesome concrete planters that are going to look great filled with flowers for our front porch.

We would have never found them if we weren’t trying to clean shop.

And that is basically what I am going through as a person.

You see, as I am cleaning my heart; sifting through a few years worth of pain, regret, depression, and fear: I am seeing these little pieces buried deep away that I want to reclaim.

Just like those buried pots in the compost.

And it takes work people.

Reclaiming lost pieces of ourselves is messy and sweaty and still brings us to tears.

But oh, when you find a part of yourself that you thought was lost- it is beautiful.

I’m finding glimpses of the fun mom who doesn’t care if the kids stay up later; because I want to be around them longer.

I’m finding glimpses of the wife who can remain calm and not need to be micromanaging every person around me.

I’m finding glimpses of the friend who has mental energy and space to think about and actively engage in relationships that I value.

I like what I am finding.

But I am sad when I realize things about myself that have been missing for so long, those lingering feelings of sorrow for lost time, lost chances.

I know all the pieces and parts I once was will never fully be mine again. Some things break for good, and thats okay. In that compost heap there were some things so fragile they couldn’t be repaired, rotting wood, broken glass.  It is the same in my heart- our hearts, too.

Some things can’t be re-purposed or refashioned or renewed.

But the things that can- Oh, the things that can.

I am desperate to reclaim the things I can.

Tags: organize, rebuilding, reclaiming