Physically aching...

It is a weird heart climate to be soaked by when you feel like you are fighting fate. I have been coping by holding on to the moments when I realize that even at great cost to my heart and those hearts around me ... if I ever come to a place that I don't feel like my heart is breathing deep life affirming breaths that there is nothing strong enough to stop me from leaving where I am and going to where I can breathe. A brilliant life changing lesson that I have learned in the past couple years is that your life can fall apart and fail to resemble hope in any form, yet even when it is not visible hope never ever ceases to exist. There are always second chances ... they may look very different from the first chance, or the chance that you want or dream of, but there is something to be said about trusting that life will, in it's greater wisdom and grace always pull you in the direction of beauty. We may fight that pull and move in directions that are not ours, or pull things into our lives that slow our arrival, but like a stream, we will, if we are open and true, always find our way back to our path. All my fluff to say that I am trying so hard to remember that there really is no right or wrong choice here. The chapters that I need to chose between for the next part of my life are both equally alive with possibility and passion and love and dedication and grace and adventure and friendship. I need to remember that in the end my heart will tell me if I have strayed to far from that which defines it. I need to remember that those whom I have chosen to build my life with will release me and love me from afar, whether I plant my roots for the next little while east or west.
But knowing that I will be in the right place in the end does not make the separation of the present hurt any less ... and it does hurt. It burns my eyes with tears, makes my chest squeeze with longing for the arms of home, and makes my tummy flip with uncertainty and fear.