Today should be better than this.

The sun is shining, the daffodils are blooming, and I should be happy.

Today I went to Wegman's, at noon, and it was relaxed and uncrowded.  I bought beef, chicken, eggs, cheese, milk, peppers, bread and some other miscellaneous items.  I felt thankful to be able to afford to buy as much delicious, nutritious food as I wanted.

I almost cried on my way out to the car.  Everything has taken on that dreamlike quality of, "Soon, I will not pass this way anymore."

The houses we looked at in the midwest are selling out from under us.  Today, another one sold... one that had made me feel safe.  One I knew we could manage with if we had to.  I didn't love it.  I wasn't dying for it.  But having it in my back pocket made me feel safe, and it is no longer in my back pocket.

Yet, I cannot see the path to getting things finished and wrapped up so we can get this house on the market.  Which, obviously, is why I am spending time on my blog and not in my basement.

I am a weak person.  I have a terrible time making myself do things that I do not want to do.  I do not want to sell this house.  But I must.  So I go to Wegman's, cook, wash clothes, anything to avoid the inevitable, and in the meantime, guilt heaps up on me like a February blizzard in Syracuse.

Why do I feel so guilty?  I think I can hardly breathe from all the guilt. I feel guilt for being lazy, guilt for not trusting Jesus with my future, guilt for not taking better care of the things I am now forced to sort through.  I feel guilt for not being more thankful that my husband has a new job, guilt for losing the home my children grew up in, guilt for ripping their memories out from under them.  I feel guilt that I fall apart and show my weaknesses and cry when I ought to keep a stiff upper lip and be there for the rest of them to lean on.

Sometimes I feel like I will die from all the heaviness of this guilt, and then I think death might be easier than going through this, but then I feel guilty at the thought of abandoning the rest of them to this life.

Someday we will all get to heaven.

Can I just say something?  I am venting, and for that I am truly sorry.  David says it is selfish and unbecoming to vent, and I'm sure that he is right.  But can I just say the thing that is breaking my heart?

I grieved for years that we lived so far from family.  My fervent prayer was always that we could move back to where our families were, back to Minnesota.  I missed my mom and dad, my aunts, uncles and cousins.  I missed two of my grandparents' funerals.  I missed everything.

But slowly, I began to hope in my new family.  My kids got through the really hard stages.  We got to where everyone could tie his own shoes and open his own car door, and even make her own sandwiches and fried eggs, and fold laundry.  We got to where we could sit at the table and share really deep talks about the Bible, or politics, or personal relationships.  We became a cohesive group, a new kind of family, a family that stood in the place of the one I lost.  Shawn and our kids and I.  We became a new family able to love and support one another.

And now, when it seems that my heart's desire, the desire to move back to the midwest, is sort of being realized, I have to give up this new family, this family that I strove so hard to nurture.  I always wanted to move back, but I especially wanted to move back so my kids could know my family.  Now I have to move back without them, without my kids, my own "new" family that was just becoming a group of mutually supportive adults.  I have to leave this family behind and go halfway back to Minnesota, to a place where, once again, I have no family, and I have to start all over.

And I am 47 this time.  I don't make friends easily.  I'm scared and sad and tired, and I have stinking stupid lupus.

Dear Jesus, please love me, because I am struggling so bad.  Drowning.  In self pity.  For which I feel guilty.  Oh God, help me.