Rebuilding After the Storm

When there is a devastating storm that destroys homes and cities, they do not rebuild the next day.

This is the epiphany I had this week. After a storm, you have to wait. You have to wait for the dust to settle and the waters to recede. After that, you have to wait for the ground to dry.

If you were to try to rebuild while the earth is still wet and things are still unstable, your foundation will collapse. Before rebuilding you also have to clean up. Sometimes this means rescuing the precious little that is left behind that survived, and sometimes it means bulldozing the whole thing.

This is my life. I think I’m okay with it. I couldn’t have rebuilt earlier if I tried and quite frankly, I’m probably not rebuilding now, I’m probably in the clean-up phase. The earth has finally dried out and so has everything else. I’ve found what I can salvage from my house and now I’m cleaning up and getting ready to build a new foundation.

Today I realized that my life is… today. I can’t keep waiting to “get better” or “get over it”. I can’t keep thinking about the past and I can’t keep listening to a previous version of Beth tell me what a failure I am. She hasn’t gone through what I’ve been through and doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

So I will take my time cleaning up my life, and eventually work on rebuilding it. But this is my life now. It will never fully be rebuilt. If everything were fixed today, who’s to say that some other crisis won’t come tomorrow.

So I will live for today and not feel guilty.