I Think I'll Go To Boston

A little over a week ago, I stood in my uncle’s hallway just outside of Boston staring at pictures of myself and my family from when I was a toddler. My uncle had passed away only a few days before that moment. I didn’t know him well. In fact, close to two decades passed before I had any contact with him at all after those pictures were taken. It felt destabilizing to recognize that I was loved by someone I only barely knew. And so, I stood there, staring at the pictures that served as a time capsule from before my memory, a relic of relationships had and lost, a symbol of missed opportunity. 

The week before, I sat alone in the sand on the beach I grew up on as the early morning waves crashed nearby. I had painted a rock that I carried with me with the word, “Beauty,” written in bold letters across. I’m not much of an artist so the rock ended up looking like a muddy Italian flag (not my intention), but in some ways, I kind of loved the visual of beauty in the midst of the very not beautiful. I came to that beach armed with courage that only the dawn can provide to say goodbye to my dear friend and family member, my Audrey girl, who had died tragically a few months prior by leaving a rock for someone to find joy in at a place that we both found so joyful. As I sat, processing life and loss, I felt consumed by the heavy absence of her tugging at my side.

When I was a teenager, I listened to adults talk about how life had not turned out as they had planned. I heard them discuss the twists and turns in their paths, the regrets, the unexpected joys and challenges, the unknowns. I believed that all of this was true for them, but I did not believe it would be true for me. I thought I was smarter somehow, more prepared or more disciplined – that my plans for life would surely work out because I believed in them. Now, a decade removed from that youthful optimism, the stories those adults once shared resonate deeply in my bones.

I have spent much of the last couple of years feeling hopeless. Heck, I’ve spent much of the last couple of days feeling hopeless. My life is not as I’d planned. I’ve experienced hurts that the seventeen-year-old in me couldn’t have possibly imagined. I’ve uncovered weaknesses that laid dormant for decades. I’ve lost relationships that felt lifelong. And I’ve aimlessly passed through countless melancholy days grieving what could’ve been. 

Somewhere along the way I got bogged down by pressures and disappointments and I lost sight of my purpose. I want it back. 

The most curious side effect of recent events is that I’ve gotten remarkably bad at communicating my wants, needs, and feelings to others. Like, bad. Consequently, I’ve begun saying yes to absolutely every request or opportunity that people present to me assuming that they know best and believing that any reaction I have to the contrary is surely misguided. This practice has left me both busier and lonelier than ever. 

It strikes me that some of the most content and joyful people that I know are also the ones who have gone through the most in their lives. They aren’t naïve to suffering or imperfection. Somehow, they’ve accepted something that I’m still struggling to. I’ve seen this in my dear friend who grew up in Jim Crow South Carolina, or in my other friend whose cancer diagnosis sidelined her during pivotal moments in her children’s lives. I’ve seen it in the student I mentored who was developmentally disabled and yet had more emotional integrity than anyone I had ever known or in my aunt who can still laugh and generously pour into others without deflecting the pain of losing her husband.

More and more I’m finding that it is a tragedy for us to live in this world as though good things are guaranteed, especially when we believe that our good actions preclude us from experiencing pain. We miss out that way – on the quiet moments, the growth in the midst of tough circumstances, and the purpose for our lives. I have spent the last three years of my life resisting hardship and feeling defeated by a God I believed had turned his back on me. I am exhausted from this fight. It’s time for me to surrender.

I’ve derived my hopelessness from the belief that I’m stuck and that life as I know it is simply a string of missed opportunities. A boy I loved wrote in my high school yearbook that he knew I was going to do big things and he wanted to hear about them. Despite the passage of time, those words have stuck with me. I feel like I’ve disappointed him and anyone else who believed in me. Am I being hard on myself? Sure, clearly my sentiments spring from a well of insecurity and perfectionism. But, nonetheless, it’s how I’ve felt.

This belief started with grief and boy have I been grieving. I have been grieving the loss of friends and family members. I have also been grieving over circumstances too impossible to believe. But as I write this, I realize that the grief that has kept me up at night is that of the loss of the identity I thought was mine – the idea I had in my head of who I was and would be and the life I thought I would lead. What would it look like for me to change my paradigm for a ‘successful’ life and step into a more lasting identity?

One of the greatest things about these last couple of weeks is that they planted a seed of hope that I have been desperately waiting for. I have been reminded, through community, that new life can spring forth from things seemingly dead. There is no greater reminder.

I left that hallway in Boston to go sit with my aunt in her newly quiet home. I have spent my whole life distanced from her assuming that perhaps she was cold or domineering. In the few days we spent together, I learned that she is anything but those things. She has a childlike outlook on life and a desire to invest in her family that left me in awe. I have plans to visit her again soon.

After leaving the beach, I drove to the bridge that bisects the neighborhood Audrey and I lived in together and placed a yellow rock with gold lettering that read, “Sparkle!” I left the rock at one corner of the bridge and then walked up, across, and back. As I reached the end of the opposite side of the road, I watched a woman find the rock, smile, and show her husband. They chose to take it with them which was exactly what I hoped for. It felt like a perfect way to carry on Audrey’s legacy in the hearts and homes of others. 

In seeing this new life spring from the ashes, I realized that saying “yes” to so many things has been a way for me to fill the void of loneliness in the absence of true community. I’ve searched for band-aids to cure my aching heart through check boxes of volunteerism and small groups, but I have not dared to explore the depth of relationship that I so desperately need. 

I told you that I was feeling stuck, but the echoes of recent days reminded me that I need to create space and look ahead to what comes next. So, this week, I quit those obligations that have been filling my time and draining my energy in favor of exploring the possibilities of what comes next, eager to see how God moves through the joy and the pain. I picture it like those containers of water with the spigot that you take with you when you go camping – you have to poke a hole in the top so the container can fill with air and water can pour out, otherwise, nothing will move even if you open the spout. I need to create the space for God to breathe new life into me so that I can discover my purpose and pour out into others. It’s been uncomfortable to make the choice to say goodbye to the things I thought I “should” be doing, but also incredibly exciting. 

At the beginning of this year, I told you all that I believed God was calling me to be a bird. I’m still not exactly sure what that means. I have thought for my whole life that this was the path I was supposed to take: go to school, find a good job in a safe city, commit to said job for the foreseeable future, find a man with similar ambitions, get married, buy a house, have kids, travel some, call it good. But what if there’s more for me and for those I do life with? What if I’m not meant to go the ‘typical’ path and follow its ‘typical’ order? What if I was born to live counterculturally? I wonder, what would life look like if I let go of my expectations for comfort and ease and instead stepped into the fullness of who God is calling me to be? 

He called me to be a bird. I may not know what that means but I see that there is freedom on the other side. And so, I will stretch out my broken wings, brace myself for the bumpy ride, and start flapping. This blog is called, ‘She Lives Freely,’ after all.

I chose ‘Boston’ by Augustana for the title of this post because of its relevance to this season of my life. My brain often gives words to my emotions through lyrics and this song has been stuck in my head for weeks. In fact, it was stuck in my head long before I learned that my uncle was dying and that I would be traveling to be with his family. It’s certainly not lost on me that the only two places mentioned in this song, Boston and California, are the two places that have radically reframed my perspective over the last few weeks on hope and new beginnings.

That being said, there were about one hundred alternate titles I could’ve chosen that would have been equally as relevant. My musings on regret and wasted time are not unique and I have been comforted in recent months by musicians and songwriters who have been able to name my experiences better than I ever could. There’s a long list, but in case you’re going through something similar, I’ve created a playlist special for you of the songs that have held my heart during this season. You can find it here.

Thank you for listening and for sitting in all of this with me. I believe that I am entering into such an exciting season of growth and change and I’m ready for it. I’ve been stagnant and living small for so long that a little unknown actually feels really good. There is more for me and, if there is more for me, I promise that there is more for you too. 

Xo, 

Abbey