How Did I Get Here? (working through "The Here Process")

"How did I get here?" 

I have heard loads of people ask this question. I have asked myself this question often in my life, particularly when I was walking through my separation and divorce. How did I get from the point of building a life with someone to the point of dismantling that life that we had built? How did I get here?

I am always only here. Here, where my feet are. Here, where my life is. I am here, never there. Once I get there, there becomes here and, in turn, is the new launching point for the next here. And each small decision made along the way determines where the next here is going to be.

Since becoming a single mom, a single woman, a single human, I have worked hard to rebuild a life that I love living. Intention came into focus. I didn’t want to carelessly or absent-mindedly or distractedly make those small decisions that determine my here.

Have I done that perfectly? No. It can be exhausting to live with that level of intention. Sometimes I slip. Sometimes I make the easy or mindless decision rather than the intentional one. Yet, overall, that shift in thinking has made a huge difference. I know how I got here.

Is here exactly where I want to be right now? Kind of. I’m still working towards a here that I haven’t gotten to yet. I have had to make decisions out of necessity that detoured me a little, but I stand by those decisions. It's part of the HERE process. 

 For example, I’ve had to put aside my writing. It was a conscious decision, and it has been hard. Sometimes I feel like my insides fill to bursting with words that I need to get out on a page, and I can’t. My nearly completed novel sits patiently in a binder by my bed, untouched now for almost half a decade. Yet I remind myself that that decision was intentional, important, and necessary to get here. And it’s temporary. I won’t be away from my writing forever.

Like writing, I’ve had to put aside singing. I spent 35 years of my life singing. And now my voice has been quiet for half a decade. Like writing, I feel songs sitting just at the top of my chest, near to bursting but without the ability to release them. It’s hard. But it’s temporary. It’s a here without singing the way I want to sing, but it’s part of the HERE process. I will sing again.

I’m going to be selling my house soon. I love my house. It’s a 240-year-old stone house that, in a former life, used to be a blacksmith shop. It’s quirky and cozy and filled with laughter and books and memories. I don’t want to sell it. But it’s necessary to continue building the life that I love living. It’s needed to move from here to the next here.

I know how I got here. And even though it’s not exactly where I want to be, that’s okay. I will continue to intentionally make decisions to move toward the next here. I will control the things that am able to control. (The rest is out of my control anyway, so I just need to let that unspool however God decides.) I will remind myself that here is where I’m meant to be, and I need to faithfully act and work and build in the here. I know how I got here.

Asking the question of “How did I get here?” is an important question, if only so I don’t ever have to ask myself that question again and not have an answer.