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GRIEF AND LOSS

It’s Gone!!!

By: Cathy DiBella

After going out for dinner one evening with my husband, I had no desire to go back home to isolation. We decided to drive around the neighborhood that we hope to eventually live in. After going from house to house, we decided on the one we liked. I wrote down the address hoping to find something about it on the Internet.

Once at home I tried to look it up but the address brought up nothing. I thought that strange because I had been looking up my childhood house, now and then, and finding it easily. I showed my husband how I was doing that and to my surprise, this big beautiful house stared back at me! I gasped! I checked the address and it was correct. I had to verify that this was the correct house, so we took off to my old childhood neighborhood.

As we came down the hill, I could immediately see that the roof was different. My heart jumped. I screamed, “IT’S GONE!”

In my childhood years, this was the ugliest house on the street. But now a beautiful house stands in its place! We parked in front of the house so I could take it all in. No sign of my childhood house remained.

I got out of the car and checked the backyard. It also was completely different. The hill we sledded down every winter was nearly gone. The landscaping stunned me. Memories of fun times flew through my mind as I looked at neighboring yards to see what might look familiar. The yard that used to be mine was the prettiest compared to all the others!

Nothing looked the same. It was like my old neighborhood never existed, and I was in another world. Only the ground they were built on remained.

Myriad emotions filled me as I continued looking around. I didn’t know if I was sad or happy. Actually, I felt set free! I hadn’t gone back there much but whenever I did, a heaviness overcame me as I looked at my old, ugly house. Unchanged.

The neighborhood started changing years ago. Builders demolished its 1950s ranches and replaced them with huge houses over time.

However, by this visit everything had changed! But it was good change. New and beautiful replaced the old and ugly. It resembled the transformation of a person who sees the light of Christ for the first time.

This new house represented physical, tangible evidence of my own healing. That ugly old house represented things like dysfunction, emotional abandonment and abuse, darkness, fear, hurt, no understanding, and no zest for life.

It’s gone, just like my old life.

Psalms 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds (curing their pains and their sorrows.)” Amplified

2 replies on “It’s Gone!!!”

Cathy, so much to experience and process so “quickly”. Glad you allowed yourself to accept and settle in on the feeling and healing of “set free”.
Your analogy to transformation in Christ is powerful. Wishing you continued joy in the journey of true freedom!

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