left

And I woke up this morning thinking the same thing.

So this, my last night in this house, is waning. The dining room is filled with the laughter which accompanies the typical card games. This family room is filled with family, reuniting and conversing. My bedroom is packed. A suitcase sitting, packed, on the hardwood floor, neighbored by a book bag and camera case. My worldly possessions. The things which will help a new home feel like an old home. I leave tomorrow after church. I will walk out the door and drive away, fly away and land in a new place.

And I'm not sure why my stomach hurts. Why my head hurts. Why my heart hurts.

Good-bye.

speciality

You want everything to be special, after all, it's your last time here. You want it to be different somehow--in some ways commemorate this last time for a threesome to gather together for two years. A threesome. This threesome. You want it to be filled with all the inside jokes you've learned and all the funny stories you've shared. You want it to be focused on the past and how much fun you've had and how much you've learned and how much you'll miss each other.

But it isn't any of that. I mean, it is a little bit, there is always the small corner of your mind reserved for 'leaving' thoughts, but other than that it's normal. You laugh loud. You whisper conspiratorially. You duck your head, blushing in any other group, but not here, not now. Not with these two. It isn't more special than this summer, in the booth pegged as ours in Sergies. It isn't more special than lazy Sunday summer afternoons, watched by strange men on bicyles. It isn't more special than all those road trips with two favorite allies. It isn't better than all of that. It's just normal. Normal and right.

You want everything to be special, and then you realize, it is. Savored and special. Different and distinct. Us together. Yeah, the last time for a long time, but together.

home

Driving home, surrounded by my surrogate family, listening to vintage Michael W. Smith and missing it all already: the familiarity of all which represents home. A day filled with tumultuous emotions, all fuzzying the already grey lines. My heart is pulled one direction, my mind another and this week doesn't help the matter.

gone

We’re not supposed to like this, she told me that’s what he said. We’re not supposed to like this. Death and a venomous hatred of it. Death and a sick pit in the bottom of your soul. Death and that’s it. A chapter closed, questions raised and no end, no answers, no reason. We’re not supposed to like this thing called death because we’re not supposed to love this thing called life.

But I don’t think that’s the greater implication of not liking death. I hate death because it reminds me that we’re human and this is life on earth. I hate death because it reminds me that this world has so much we think is worth living for and it’s not. It’s not and that’s what I hate about death. We’re supposed to love eternal life and all the fullness there so much that we hate the stink of death, but we hate the stink of life on earth equally.

Paul was certain that he wasn’t confronted with suffering and persecution and conformation even to death so that he would know real satisfaction of getting what he wanted out of this world. No! It was so that he might attain the resurrection from the dead! Division from his earthly body and fleshly desires. Separation from his wickedness and humanity. He wanted death from those things so badly that he even hated life itself.

It grieves me. Death grieves me. A better acquaintance, a renewed remembrance, a single tear tracking a path down the cheek of a loved one. I look away. This pain of life ending is only a reminder of the inevitability of the cycle we took a bite of thinking it would make everything better, only to find that He was right again.

Your pain becomes my peace.

missing

A night out with friends. Sitting on downy leather couches in front of a warm fire, each cradling a hot drink in one hand and favorite books in the other. Her a home decorating book, her a childrens story book and me a book about sunken ships and modern science.

I am tempted to pull out a book of poems or a how-to-herb-garden book with lots of photos and a good index. I am tempted to puruse through a book on bricklaying and maybe pull out one on canoeing through the Adirondacks. The newest Madeleine L'engle calls me quietly from its place in the philosophy section and I know I saw an Eliot on the rare finds shelf. But it's the big white book filled with pirates and treasures, maps and lifeboats that eventually settles in my lap. Something that won't make me too jealous for the here and the now life. Something that will simply fill my mind of the past and give me nothing to be envious of in the future.
I sip my warm milk and glance up at the two people sitting on either side of me. I call them my friends, my comrades, and my sisters. I will miss this I know. I will miss this warm world; this world I call home; this world I feel safe and accepted in; this world I know and this world who knows me back.

I will miss the friends I have and the friends I'd like to have and just haven't pursued them as ardently as I should have. I will miss this home, this haven. I will miss the easy friendship and family I know here. I will miss a year of my little brothers lives, they will grow a few more inches [as they are prone to do lately] and they will learn a few more things before I come home. I will miss my church, so many changes are already peeking over the box top and it will be different when I do come home. I will miss small things like compatability and sureity. I will miss my nitches and my places. I will miss Jay and Leila and Kylee at The Fields and they say they'll miss me too. I will miss Potsdam. I will miss Madrid. I will miss here.

And I'll miss you.

good?bye

We count down the days til Christmas each night around the supper table. One person, in sucession, from oldest to youngest, reads another piece of the story we place our hope in. Fourteen days left. Fourteen days left until Christmas and seventeen left until I leave.

And tonight, as I sat on my bed, surrounded by piles of things to be packed or tossed, watched by a bosom friend and kindred spirit, and reading my birthday card from her, I felt the tears moisten in my eyes. Saying goodbye. That's what we're doing. Not saying goodbye for a year, as it is with everyone else, but saying goodbye for two years to each other. Guatemala and China weren't supposed to be on opposite sides of the world. Friends are best when they are next door, right?

Friends are best when words don't have to be spoken, eye contact is always available. Friends are best when visions collaborate and confrontations are simply character builders. When vulnerability is hard because it means there is more to disappoint, but easiest because there is no limit to the hope which presses on. When you find in one the quietness which pushes you to succeed and holds you back from the edge of disaster. Protection from danger and vision for the adventure. Never a distraction, always a co-laborer. When worship is shared by the secret wonder that you really know God and now you know Him together. When you find yourself crying in the passenger seat of a Honda on a windy March night or sobbing on the carpet of the front room on the loneliest October night.

When it is hardest to say goodbye accompanied by the knowledge that seventeen days left to two years without each other is just a long time.

sycamore

Sycamore trees and weeping willows; Maple leaves and fruit orchards; Conversations and this world.

I am a few more miles down this road of faith and find, when glancing over my shoulder to see how far I’ve come, that I haven’t covered as much ground as I’d like. I haven’t scaled higher mountains more recently and I haven’t gone to greater depths of late. My spirit still slumps, my soul still falters and my mind is prone to wandering still. I haven’t become more gifted and I haven’t given more away. I’m still very much the same inside, yet something is so different and I can’t put my finger on it.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that this world is not my home. It has floored me lately. I think I write about it a lot. I know I think about it a lot. Every story I recount, every joke I attempt at retelling and every memory I tuck away, has the stink of rubbish about it. Rubbish of this world.

The sycamore trees, fruit orchards and the pretty Starbucks in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, home of my youth. The black and white portraits of my little brothers standing on Hardscrabble road late this summer, them holding onto Queen Anne’s Lace and me holding onto a memory. The white lights and even the front room last night, filled with the people I really do love most in the world, and, which is suddenly so much more, people who love me back. The words they shared and the prayers they commissioned me with. The tears which subsided and the tears which shouldn’t. All the things I hold dear, built my life upon.

Conversations and this world. This world. And I’m just passing through.