Cardboard Box

Brown. Cardboard. Sturdy. Taped.

It's just a box. Merely pieces of cardboard formed into a container that holds safe your belongings and carries them to destinations of your desire. So why did it make so many emotions rise in my chest?

This past week, I got home from teaching and finally did what I had been meaning to do for a while - I packed clothes, shoes, and jackets into a cardboard box to ship back home. Packing has always been a despised task by me, but this time, it made me feel more than disgust for its very creation. This time, I was packing a box because my life is about to change drastically . . . again.

I haven't exactly been counting down the weeks until I return back to the land of the free and home of the brave (my wonderful father decided to take on that task himself. lol). I've thought about what it will be like when I get back. I've thought about what I will do, where I will go, who I will see. I've thought about the emotions, the reunions, and most importantly, of course, the bread aisle at Walmart. But none of it seemed real. These were mere thoughts, imagined situations that flitted through my mind like a firefly at night - here then there, back and forth, mysteriously appearing then disappearing without warning.

With each unwanted and unneeded piece of winter clothing emptied from a drawer; with each item carefully rolled and arranged in my cardboard box (just like Dad taught me); with each strip of tape (there may or may not possibly be an extreme amount of adhesive covering all openings on my box) cut and placed on my cardboard box, the reality of my life as I have now begun to know it changing again slowly crept over me, like the tide creeps over the sand. My life here will be ending soon - two months can seem like a long time to a child waiting for a birthday or a student waiting for school to end. But I am neither of those. I am a woman walking down a road and seeing the next new road in the not-so-far-away distance. I am a woman who now has two homes and is waiting to leave one for the other. I am a woman waiting to face the fears I have of leaving, many of them the same fears I had upon arriving.

Reality still hasn't fully overtaken me yet. No plane ticket yet, no empty apartment, no packed suitcases at the door, no inevitably emotional goodbyes. The tide is still creeping in, and won't fully overtake me until I'm sitting on that plane leaving behind the new life God has helped me make for myself. Instead of the moon influencing this tide however, it was a cardboard box. Something so simple causing such a big effect on me. Something so simple causing emotions of excitement, sadness, thoughtfulness, and anxiety to fill my heart and mind all at the same time. Hmm, who knew a cardboard box could be so powerful . . .