On Celebrations & Landmines & Reminders of Spaces We Had to Leave

Maycember showed up in overwhelming fashion this year. Last week I wrapped up a marathon-turned-sprint of graduating our daughter, Audrey. This time of year is particularly packed, but this one included milestones to celebrate, landmines to avoid, and the mixed feelings of leaving behind a chapter that contained a lot of good moments and a lot of difficult ones.

It was the end of 14 years of homeschooling and 11 years connected to a particular homeschool community- a community where I never felt like I fit, and where I became less and less comfortable as the years went by.

We finished our time in that space and followed the unmissable signs that directed us out of that room.

I’ve become more of an expert at leaving rooms than I ever wanted to be.

To be honest, I so wanted to leave earlier, but the right thing was to stay. And so I learned the lessons of being in a Christian community that ended up requiring more integrity and strength of character to follow our convictions than the “secular” spaces in our community ever have.

Nothing is all good or all bad.

I’m tempted to describe all the places I’ve left behind as unhealthy, problematic, . . . (fill in the negative adjective here). I want to roll my eyes at the person I was when the rooms felt comfortable.

But that’s unfair to the past version of me and the imperfect spaces that introduced us to sweet friendships and opportunities. And it’s unfair to those who, for one reason or another, need to remain. I don’t want to curse the places I’ve left behind.

I want to gently hold the face of past Amy and say I know why she made the decisions she made. She wasn’t stupid. She did the best she could with the knowledge and situation she had been given.

While we set up the table to display Audrey’s photo board and memorabilia at the graduation venue, I held my breath, knowing we wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing people from Nathan’s former place of employment.

They represented another room we exited. I felt anxiety about seeing them as this day approached. I had lots of mixed feelings. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to specifically avoid people or if I wished they would talk to us.

In the end, we left with no one saying anything.

If they had, would I have tried to see them as complicated, nuanced people who could represent more than one thing? Would I have been able to tell them we have unanswered questions and also communicate empathy for the situation they were in?

I wish I could have told them that we also wished our daughter’s graduation day didn’t come with awkward and painful reminders.

But it did.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a day like this that didn’t contain complicated feelings?

We had an open house the day after Audrey’s graduation. We celebrated her. We ate lots of cake. And our house was full of people who we love dearly, who came into our lives by way of so many spaces we have left behind.

We feel the tension, and we celebrate anyway.