You Can't Go Back

I went back to our old home last weekend for Easter. We moved a little over a year ago, and I guess there has been a part of me that wished that we could one day move back there and insert ourselves right back into our old lives. There is always a possibility that Chuck's job could lead us back there one day, however, I realized this past weekend that you can't go back. So many things have changed in the last year. For one, our kids are a year older. Were we to move back, in say five years (this is just a random thought), Nicholas wouldn't be 18 mo old and Patrick wouldn't be a precious first grader anymore. Another change is our previous church. There has been a major upset. Many of our friends have left. Lots of hearts are broken. It would be very hard to worship there right now. Our old house has also changed as well (yes, I know of course we wouldn't live there again). The new owner ripped out all of the landscaping in the front..all of it! It was quite a shock to see. I guess what I learned last weekend was that even though I have longed for my old life in this past year, I have slowly let it go and adjusted to the new life as well. There is so much to take from every experience we have in this life and we can choose to grow as a person and look for new opportunities or we can wish for what once was and what will never be again and have a lot of unhappy days. It is not to say I haven't had my share of unhappy days in the last year because I have, but I am happy now that we are here and we are a family and we will continue to make the best of life. We are so very blessed. This has been our fourth move in our marriage, so I am not unaccustomed to starting a new life. I suppose this last move has been harder because we had so much of our family close by and we had and such a great church family. It was a lot to leave behind, however, we have much to look forward to as well.