A Road Less Travelled

(Written last night)

So here I am. My Internet is down and keeps giving me fits. I’m trying trying trying to fix it so that I can do, I don’t know, something. Something interesting for about 30 minutes and then I can go to sleep. I’m tired, see. A deep, weary sort of tired. I’ve got lots of things I can blame it on- the weather’s been goofy for several days and I know barometric pressure effects me; I’ve been three quarters running this household for several weeks and that’s getting tiring and added to that is Justice’s coping mechanism which is to be exactly where I am at all times usually whining at me about something or other; there’s always hormones to think about; and I found out that some friends are moving away. They are moving back to Georgia in only a few weeks and I will have to say goodbye.

Goodbye. The Minbari don’t have a word for goodbye and they’ve been right about other things. It’s a horrible word, a word that carries the full terror of our sinfulness. It’s the word Adam brought into the world when he fell from God’s favor and dragged us all screaming with him. It’s the word that most makes me want to go Home forever. I can handle toil, I can handle sorrow and the suffering God thinks my shoulders are wide enough for, I can handle six whiny children and a messy house, but goodbyes are beyond me. Every goodbye makes me more tired than I’ve been before and makes me long, long, for my Home. Jesus promises no more tears. And since I’m crying now over this goodbye I take that promise to mean no more goodbyes, too. Never saying “I love you” as the dirt hits pine. Never putting on a brave face and pretending to believe it’s only “So Long”. Never being torn by places and people, never wishing you could actually be torn in two so that your body would reflect your soul. Never watching your innocence fade and knowing you will never, ever see it again. Never saying goodbye to a person you never got to meet and never feeling every single mile that is wearing a relationship thin and making you into different people. Home is never and always and I so want to go. I’m in exile where we keep having to say goodbye.

Here’s where I should talk about God’s plan. Here’s where I pontificate and speculate on what He’s doing in all this. But really, right now I think He’s got His arm around me and He’s holding me as I cry out my pain. I’m His daughter and I’m getting ready to say goodbye and it hurts so bad. He’s got to be holding me cause I can’t do goodbyes by myself. And truthfully I’m saying goodbye right now. In a few weeks I will put my arms around Jana and we will cry and she will say “Goodbye” and I will say “It’s never Goodbye; it’s only So Long” and I will want to believe myself and we will cry. But the heavy lifting of that goodbye happens here, tonight, all by myself. So I cry and pray and I long for our Home where we never never say goodbye.