Engagement, Moving and Growing (sorry for the sap...)

Can't stay still. Life and relationships sure don't. I spent the last four days reducing my "home" in Mundelein (northern burbs of Chicago) into a vast sea of boxes. I've moved probably 20 times in my life, between family moves, college dorms and summers home, as well as life as a vagabond; but this one was particularly emotional. Married Men, maybe you understand this. For some reason, this weekend I feel more commited to my fiancee, Lisa, than I did before I packed up my house. But it's a hard commitment that took some dying to self. I felt like I was closing a door with this move. It was a door behind me with a view to single adult life that was told in the narrative symbols of a mass of "stuff". A lot it was stuff covered with dust or unopened in a while. But, while viewing each piece anew was a momentary chance to dust off and revive them, most of them would never have a role again in my life. With every box I sealed and with every haul of junk I tossed in the dumpsters, I was walking more assertively into the future, the rest of my life as a married man. The hard part of this move was deciding what of the "stuff" can and can't come with me into the next phase of life. I had to try and keep mainly stuff that Lisa could have ownership of as well as myself. And, while I don't consider myself someone who ordinarily attaches to stuff, I am a sentimentalist when something symbolizes an era and I generally hang on to timepieces and smutty, sentimental items. This weekend I found all sorts of old cards from people, pictures and bags of letters from old girlfriends, silly, little, junky trinkets, etc. But I had to let a most of it go and it was strangely a kind of "naked" expeience. But it really became worship when I realized how much I was moving into fuller union with Lisa through it. It's a union that God has made specially among relationships to most intimately reflect Christ and the Church. Marriage is a special narrative that God is loving to use with me for taking head knowledge and making it heart knowledge. I actually felt the tension of joy and sorrow that will inevitably be part of death and heavenly union with God. I won't be able to take along ANY of the material symbols of the 60 or 70 year "me". So for the rest of my life, I will no longer be the single Brad that I or any of the rest of the world has known. I will be the married Brad, uniquely united with Lisa and sealed in the covenant of marriage. In another 30 years, there will be little to nothing left of the material symbols that tell the story of the single Brad. It's going to be a fun privilege to "remeet" and deepen existing friendships with people who have known me as single Brad. In 30 more years, there'll be lots of stories! I can only pray that in getting there I will ultimately glorify and enjoy the Lord while I love and enjoy Lisa, and that someday dying to my married self in order to be in greater union with God will be as satisfying and worshipful as this process of dying to my single self is turning out to be.