Cast like a pearl

almost to the end of September already. i am ready for the rich heady season of October, with pumpkins on the front porch and the creeper blushing to a deep fire red before our eyes. the air carries a deeper chill at night, the cat and my husband both cuddle closer in the wee hours.
i have been writing more in recent weeks. a new song came in the last few days, a real hymn called "This Is My God". i want to sing it over and over, it has a flowing melody and a strong memorable chorus...but mostly it just hangs on and on in my head because it is the most impassioned love song i have produced in years, and it is a love song to my Creator, not to yet another emotionally unavailable person at the end of the bar. this is a change for me...some of my friends would scarcely recognize the person i am becoming these days. but it matters less and less. sometimes i am pierced by loneliness as i feel people steping back and falling away from me. but i am not at all surprised by it, only observant of the startling accuracy of it.
we prepare our house for market with small adjustments and flourishes: today i finished painting the dining room. the raw wall has been sealed in the basement and the faded drywall repainted. more painting remains, as well as gutters to be cleaned, a porch to be repaired. some raking and cleaning of our tiny excuse for a yard.
as we go about the tasks i arrange and re-arrange the furniture in my mind carefully. regarding the people i kove, "goodbye " is not part of my vocabulary. i prepare to strain the love and faith of the people in my life, possibly to the breaking point for some. it is something i apparently have to do. at times i am nearly overwhelmed with guilt and uncertainty over my pending action. it is not my intent to hurt anyone by leaving. but i have to leave. i have to experience something else, for a season at least. i have to find out if i can make some kind of a life of creating songs, once and for all. i have to know the answer to that question. as many answers as i have received from others over the course of my life, who have their own vested interests at heart...i have never formed an answer for myself, based on my own experience. i have to do that now. i will never have the opportunity again. this and this alone is my reason and motivation for going. i pray and hope fervently that i will be forgiven for this indulgence. i am not so worried about God forgiving me; He made me this way. i am confident that He is directing my course and that He wants me to try. the forgiveness i seek is from friends ...i know very well how it feels to think one has been abandoned. i am loathe to be the cause of those feelings in another.
but i am in the stringent process of learning how much control i really have over the feelings of others; about whose choice those feelings are. i am equipped only to manage my own emotions, no one else's. this too is strange new territory for me. i am ready and willing to learn it as God directs.