I’m curled up on the couch with Tiny Companion again. A single bird chirps outside my window and
the light creates shadows and designs on the back of the sofa. I pull the sunglasses out of my hair and
settle in. Such a familiar place… and
yet so foreign. The kitchen sits empty
where the table used to be. Our first
roommate has moved out. The program from
a friend’s wedding stands next to my wilting bridesmaid bouquet. Endings and beginnings. The framed picture from another friend is
displayed close by accompanied by a card with her new address a thousand miles
away. We celebrate the new adventures to
come. The other roommate locks the door
behind her as she and her fiancé go to sign a lease for the home they will soon
share. Dreams coming true.
“You’re at peace,” she told me as we sipped our drinks under
the tree in the middle of campus. “I can
see it in your body.” I smiled back at
this sister who has accompanied me, and nod, “I am.” And now that I am alone, the tears fall, for
in the midst of all this rapid change these tears of gratefulness, hope, joy,
faith, and even a touch of fear of the unknown, these tears say it all: It is
well with my soul. And that may be the
most foreign thing for me. Peace.
I’ve never been here before.
Waiting without a real plan.
Watching people leave, move on, and yet knowing, most assuredly, it is
going to be GOOD. And if it never gets
any better than this… that’s fine with me.
Ann Voskamp, author of the book One
Thousand Gifts, says it this way, “I can walk the planks from known to
unknown knowing – He holds.” And so it
goes, one step at a time, gathering the manna each day, taking my nourishment
from it, wishing I could call it something more than “What is it?,” yet
sustained by the fact that it is beyond me.
For what feels like the first time in my life, I’m not grasping. I’m not reaching and clinging. I do not have “a death grip on this life that’s
in transition.” Like a child letting her
toy sailboat go on the surface of the pond, I feel release. My life will go. Our lives will go. Like that moment at the end of a symphony, I
can feel my breath catching, suspended, the moment hanging there, and I wait
for the resolution, but I am so captured, so enraptured by the sheer beauty of
it, I don’t care if it never resolves. Let
us hang here, suspended, forever. And
yet the moment does come when the final sound wave dissolves and the lights
come up and we stand to continue with our lives, when we hug and walk our separate
ways to continue our separate journeys.
The experience, however, is written on our hearts, our lives changed
forever, eyes and all senses have been awakened to Beauty and the pursuit of
grace. And I cannot limit it all to
words as I would like to, but I feel my heart settle, like a bird landing
gracefully on a branch, or the last leaf of autumn drifting to the ground, I
feel it settle on this fact alone, words from Psalm 23: Surely your goodness
and love will follow me all the days of my life. His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm
136). He is GOOD.
