Just in time By Bambi Lynn

I have felt so out of place, since I moved here three years ago. it's been two years in Brunswick but, three years since I sold my house and 95% of my belonging. I haven't settled and neither has my heart. I miss so much about home; I miss my friends and the hustle and bustle of my home on Cumberland Avenue. I miss the memories that were made there and the years I have spent building a family and a home. I miss the stop ins and sitting at my table or in the living room just chatting and sharing life with the people around me. i have missed the sense of belonging and I long to belong somewhere again.

 I moved in with my daughter and her family when I first made it to the southern sunshine. I felt like this could work. being with my daughter and my grandchildren all the time, that is every grandparent's dream. waking up by the jumping on my bed by my grandson, yelling "it's time to get up Nona" Can we play Farts on Alexa?  let's build a fort with all the blankets. My eyes were not even open when the adventures would begin. Then one day all that came crashing down, when a marriage ended, and another began. I had moved so many times throughout my life and my home on Cumberland. Was made into my safe place and now the memories of that moving hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't belong anywhere, and I didn't even know where to begin to look. I was scared and felt hopeless and homeless. I can talk about it now because the sting isn't there anymore but, the brokenness still remains because I gave of my safety to move to the sunshine states, and I was and still feel a cloud over me.

I had to find a place to live. I found my apartment in Brunswick, GA. mostly because I had to find a place for my job. I had to be in a market that my job was available, even though I traveled 95% of my life, I still needed a place to lay my head when I wasn't I did have fun decorating my little 900 square ft. apartment. I made it feel like a sanctuary when I was home to pack again for the next business trip. I bought everything new or had things made that told my story and I felt when I walked into the door from a long trip away, I felt this would do until I lost my traveling job last December, I can't even write this without the emotions taking over. I felt so lost and abandoned. My travel job helped me not to be so homesick all the time because, at times I would be close enough to my children and grandchildren, and also Buffalo, where I called home to be okay with living in the Southern state of Geogia. but when my position was dissolved i felt isolated and would just turn to my bedroom and watch my computer and eat on my bed. Nobody was just going to pop in for a chat and a cup of coffee or a three-course meal. I was and am alone. I have tried to make friends and have a kindred spirit with someone. My Work team isn't like my traveling coworkers that we had to rely on each other because we were the only ones who really knew what we were going through. We created a family and once again I was without one. 

I work a lot of hours and sometimes strange hours. So, to cultivate a relationship with others is difficult. Even the time it takes to build a relationship is time I am not sure I want to invest. I don't know if I can explain it in a way that bring justice to not cultivating, But I am afraid of being alone again and those friendships that I just started not being there only by phone calls and letters and seeing our lives lived out on Facebook. I need real connection but, was too afraid to step out to get that, Until....

I became an author this past June. I am always trying to find ways to market and promote my book, no easy task with a full-time job and a city where you weren't born and raised. I I went to the local library to bring my book in. I was trying to acquire about programs they had for the local authors. I was told about an Author Expo, where authors would come together and sell their book to the public. The library would do all the promotion and getting the word out. When the night came, there were ten other authors. One of them was Jackie Strickland, a seventy-nine-year-old woman who started writing ten years ago. She wrote her first book "Red high Heels on My Mamas grave" We just hit it off. Some of our stories were parallel of each other. While she was telling her story I was wondering if she read my story. A kindred spirit started. We connected from knowing each other's pain and that our Jesus was the only thing that could have ever gotten us through our life story. Miss Jackie invited me to an Author reading; I had never been or experience something like that before. When I walked into the building, her face lit up and she started telling her friends around her, "this is my new friend." I felt so loved at that moment and a sense of belonging fell over me. I was a little girl again at Christmas receiving my favorite doll. I felt for that moment that I was home, sitting around the room were people that could become my family. I would be someone they took under their wing and help me to belong somewhere again. Each one of them were old enough to probably be my mom, I think that is why I felt like I belonged because I longed to be loved by a mom. 

Miss Jackie called me that evening, I felt like two schoolgirls finding each other in the halls and becoming best friends. I purchased her second book, "Once upon too Many" She wrote in the front, " More than Kindred spirits, future best friends" Could God of wink at me and wanted me to know, I gotcha daughter. When my spirit has been low, and I struggle with crawling in a hole. God shows up in the Form of Jackie.   Just in Time