here's what they don't tell you in missionary training.
they don't tell you that if you fall in love with a whole community of people, there are not going to be enough hours in the day to spend quality time with all of them.
especially not when you only have 20 days left.
they don't tell you that every minute you are with one group of people you love, you will be agonizing about the people you aren't seeing, talking, hanging out with, laughing with, being present to.
20.
they don't tell you that each moment will feel like this precious piece of liquid gold you're trying desperately to hold onto even as it slips through your hands.
they don't tell you that you will start resenting public transportation and menial necessary tasks because they equal more time you can't be with people you love.
20.
they don't tell you that you will constantly fluctuate between feeling immensely guilty and wholly justified for every choice you make about who and how you spend your time.
they don't tell you that you will stand in an empty sanctuary and listen to the noises of your community upstairs and your heart will ache with the longing to spend every waking moment with them because the leaving is coming like a freight train without breaks.
20.
they don't tell you that you will constantly be caught off guard by moments that bring you to tears in their poignancy and ordinariness and your deep desire to remember every single thing about them.
they don't tell you that you, the introvert, will spend all of this time with people and forget that you need time alone to process and to think and to feel. And when you do unexpectedly find yourself alone, all you will be able to do is breath and whisper prayers that sound a lot like, "please, Lord, please."
20.
they don't tell you that loving means facing this immense sense of loss.
I haven't done this before, in this way. I've done it in other ways, in other places, in other times.
It is the conundrum of being in the midst of something you're still trying to figure out. There are no neat ends or ways to nicely wrap things up. It is a life, a normalcy, a way of being.
and all I have is twenty.
6 comments:
from someone who is one day on the other side of this transition, i promise he'll carry you through. he is gracious and good like that.
this reminds me of a poem Curiosity by Alastair Reid. he creates an analogy using the nature of cats. this is the end
Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory, curious enough to change, prepared to pay the cat price, which is to die and die again and again,each time with no less pain.A cat minority of one is all that can be counted on to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell on each return from hell is this: that dying is what the living do, that dying is what the loving do, and that dead dogs are those who do not know that dying is what, to live, each has to do.
Well said, Erin. I'm at 12. 12! eish...
@ Carrie- those were/are words I needed. thank you for sharing them.
@Greg- what a beautiful poem! truly.
@Jen- I'm praying for you friend. and looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta.
Your FB post said that you were going to watch the Sound of Music recently. Please remember that when He closes a door that He opens a window.
Maybe there are others that you do not know -- right now -- who need your loving care and are waiting for your arrival ? Love you,
wow... terrible grammar on my previous post. :-(
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