“If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn’t come back to you, you never had it. It it does come back, love it forever.” When I went searching for this quotation, I discovered its author was Doug Horton, a name I have never seen. Pastor Horton was an American clergyman in the Congregational Church; I love Wikipedia. I went searching for this quote because I was full of sorrow yesterday and realized that my grief arises from my loss or the fear I may lose something. I am not angry or indignant or outraged. I am sad, utterly sad. The sadness gives testimony to something truly grand. My restored ability to hope and love. Some may argue that you cannot love a ‘thing’, but Pastor Horton knew otherwise. The quote does not say, “It you love someone…..”. My sorrow, my bereavement is born out of my loss, the loss of a dream. The significance is that I completely and absolutely opened myself to this dream, this notion of building a house, a home, my home. I drank in the splendor of the dream, visualized it down to the way the sunlight will come in the window in the afternoon. I can imagine myself waking in the morning and see the light fixture above my bed. I can walk around the yard and see my daylilies and hydrangeas in bloom, smell the Confederate jasmine and see the red buds in full bloom. I can see the full moon rising in the east.
And the dream is likely never to happen. The economy, the value of land, the inability to get funding for construction all result in the probability that I will not be able to build this house. To add the insurmountable, even if all those factors could be scaled, the bank is likely going to refuse to lend to a person building a custom home simply because I am the FIRST to build in the development. Someone has to be first but no matter. The whole affair will likely have been for nothing, a grand fantasy. And yet…..I realized this.
I am utterly and completely sad, bereft and inconsolable. My emotions overwhelm me and I am weeping. I am not angry or enraged or fighting. I am just sad. I know the logic of it all. I understand the economy. It doesn’t change that I fell in love. And in that….I have a miracle. I fell in love. Completely and absolutely invested myself emotionally to this idea, this hope, this fantasy. I took a colossal risk with my heart. There was no assurance that I could pull this house building off; yet, I committed myself to it. It’s sheer madness and folly. I held nothing back, nothing. And this morning, in realizing that, I am also utterly and completely grateful. My heart can love with abandon and recklessness. I can go all in with fearlessness. If this house building my the therapeutic path to mending my heart, then it worked.
And so, I can give the house up. I can let it go. I can allow myself to consider buying an existing home, a home once occupied by another person’s dreams. I can let go and know that if it comes back, I will love it forever. But if it doesn’t it was never meant to be for me.
