Today’s photo comes courtesy of a girl who doesn’t necessarily love going back to her hometown.
The why of that is far too long and complicated to get into…it’s just difficult.
I go so Mae can see her grandparents…
…so I can see my family and a handful of friends who live there.
But it’s hard to be in a place that hurts…so much heartbreak and un-belonging. (I’m in the business of making up words these days. ;))
One of the ways I survive (and I say that carefully…it’s obviously not real survival ;)) is by running. I run here, but running there is different because that physical run often turns into a head-on sprint into my past.
Last Tuesday morning, I went for a run through the neighborhood I grew up in.
So much of it hadn’t changed and yet it felt foreign.
I had run from my mom’s house, past my elementary school, through my old neighborhood, down by the park and public pool, around the lake, and on my way back, I decided I needed to run back by the place I’d lived for the first fourteen years of my life.
I really wanted to take a full-on picture but didn’t want to look like a creeper. Instead, I settled for wrestling my iPhone out of my sweaty armband and snapping a photo of the street…but my house is the white one that you can kind of see through the trees. 😉
Running by it was bittersweet…out of my years spent in C-town, those spent in that house…on that street…are the ones that I’m (mostly) ok with revisiting. There were special moments in that neighborhood…bike rides with friends on sidewalks that are still there, getting knocked out with a baseball in the side yard one spring, sledding down our hill every winter, 4th of July fireworks-watching from our backyard.
I do smile when I think of those things, even the baseball knocking out part. 😉
But what I’m kind of glad you can’t see in this picture is the stop sign at the end of the (very long) block.
It’s the corner of Park and Kirby, and it’s an intersection I wish never existed. Ever.
Because when I was ten, that’s where my closest friend in the neighborhood died.
Car accident.
I’m brave enough to drive through it now, but I couldn’t for years. Years.
I ran through it, and while I tried to put out of my mind what had happened there 24 1/2 years ago, the tears still sprang to my eyes.
Some memories are embedded too deeply to ever be erased, I guess.
I’ve tried giving thanks over and over for my hometown, for the pain it holds, for the memories that are there, for the pieces of my heart that will always be tied to this town of 9,000.
I find it hard to say thank you for pain, but He does work through it. He gives and He reminds that He is always good, even when families shatter to bits and girls are mean and friends leave this world way too soon.
Just a few confessions from the small-town piece of my heart I left behind 21 years ago.
Thanks for taking a walk down Park Street and memory lane with me today. 
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Happy Tuesday to you all! Today I’m linking up at my friend, Crystal’s place for some sweet and silly and sometimes-tear-jerking storytelling…the kind where we show you pictures and tell you what’s really going on behind the camera lens.
Social media and online relationships can make us feel like everyone else has it all together. We’re edited, proof-read, Pinterest-perfect versions of ourselves (or so some might think!) when – in reality? There is an unfinished pile of laundry around the corner. That cute toddler smiling for the camera just had a massive meltdown seconds ago. That yummy breakfast-for-dinner you just showed us on Instagram? It’s because the cat licked the chicken that was supposed to be for dinner.
“Behind the Scenes” is a fun link up where we show those photos – but tell the real story behind them. The sneak peek behind the scenes, a look past the edges of the photo to the real life behind it.
Thanks for taking the time to read my words…I hope you’ll hop over and read more about what’s happening in the lives of some of my favorite bloggy-sisters!
