Life has a way of teaching you exactly what you need to learn as long as you are paying attention and open and accepting of the lessons.
Marcia and I both are having to close our businesses. This is and has been an emotionally heavy experience. We've invested a lot of love, a lot of time, and of course, a lot of money in both businesses. We did our best and that is what makes it so hard. We tried and made decisions the best we could but ultimatley, the economy did not hold for us. Maybe we tried too hard. I don't know.
I do know that I don't regret any of it. I believe it was what we were supposed to do and that now we are supposed to do even bigger and better things in life. And we will. We'll use what we learned over the last four years to do those new things as well as we can and better than we would have without the experience of the last four years. And we will move on both literally and figuratively.
The Universe most definitely has a way of giving you what you need when you need it. We had gotten to a point where the girls were particularly at the end of their ropes. They were getting very upset quite often about Marcia's absence. You will recall that Marcia took a job in Virginia in early December of 2008. She was coming home about three out of four weekends with several two week absences already having occurred. I was getting pretty stressed over it and over the three months of having to keep the house in showing shape while we were trying to sell it. I was definitley getting tired of that and was getting stressed over the girls getting so upset. I know it was no cake walk for Marcia either.
On Tuesday the 10th of March, Marcia and I basically made the hard decisions and started down the path of closing the businesses. On Thursday the 12th, we had a second showing by a couple that was "very interested." We didn't think too much of it because at this point we'd been desensitized to any interest in the home. We'd had lots of "interest" and even a contract that we ended up getting slapped in the face with. But for some reason we felt that this was going to be it. On Monday the 16th, we got an offer and I think on Tuesday we accepted a negotiated contract and signed it.
Talk about a roller coaster. The emotional ride of deciding to close what had been our lives for four years and all the emotional baggage involved in that followed by the relief of having sold the house. Not to mention the wonderful opporunity of an end of May closing. Through all of this, we'd said we would stay until the end of the school year in order to let the girls finish up their year. Now we don't have to live at Mom's for more than two weeks. And we've got plenty of time to find a new home in Virginia and take our time planning our move.
I never lost my faith in the Universe through all of this. I admit that I questioned it a few times and it definitely waivered but I never lost it. I always knew in my heart that what was supposed to happen is what would happen and that even if challenging it would be perfect in the way that it was meant to be. The beauty of that is the never ending nature of it. It's not that I now have stopped feeling that way, I just know now that a new purpose, a new path, is beginning to take shape and that it too will reveal itself as being perfect in its own way.
So here we are at an interesting crossroads; putting closure by closing a door on a path that lead to us to so many wonderful friends and discoveries while opening another door to a new path that has yet to fully reveal itself.
Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
