If you saw this room now, you’d never know. At a glance, you would see a stripped-down bed, an empty bookshelf, and a borrowed red chair. These walls (covered in flags silently telling tales of my travels alongside watercolor artwork, a gift from my favorite six-year old) offer the only real hint of the past ten months in this place. Now, only the few carefully-placed photographs and Bible verses remain. You would never know how they had evolved – how they slowly cultivated over the months and enveloped more and more of these walls as the friendships became richer and the trials became tougher. Seeing this now, you would only see an empty end product. You would never know about the messy journey that was had within these walls. You might never know.
It’s eerie now, completely impersonal. My own little ghost town of debris that either didn’t make the cut or didn’t fit into my red Escape on the trip down. This isn’t my home now, and I’m not sure if I really ever considered it to be. This big old town that wanted me more than I wanted it in return.
What is this place anyway? Just somewhere I went off for two years and has a hold on me for two more. It’s the town of the only school I applied to. I can’t say if this is home, but it’s been good to me. It’s taken care of me. And for that I am thankful.
It’s a little church with wooden pews and a preacher shaking hands out front. It’s just another house with a beautifully designed backyard and a great big roof under the shade of a tree so many times older than us. It’s a long morning drive – only to find yourself amidst the brisk autumn leaves and the sound of twenty happy shouts and a beckon to push the swings higher. It’s the way the train sounds in a yellow house with decades of rat infestations that also happens to smell of feet (and coffee). It’s a group of twenty-somethings crammed into a small room sharing and mulling over the Word while time stands still and cookies bake in the oven. It’s a hallway of leaves, under which you’ll almost certainly find a happy few, each armed with a picnic lunch and a Bible. It’s some dark, crappy bar that you may have never set foot in if your best friend wasn’t up there stealing the stage alongside some other wonderful people. And somewhere in all of it, tucked away, is a group of seven who like to use the words “bogan” and “shitty” to describe the wonderful place of unity and the culture they have created there – one of selflessness and unconditional love. I say that this isn’t home, and maybe it’s not, but how much of my heart have a left here? More than I’d like to think. It would have been impossible not to. I’ve left it here in this place and with these people, hoping that it will be well taken care of while I’m away.
If I don’t miss it in this moment, I sure will in the ones that follow.
But for now, closure is all I crave. I can’t wait to close some doors for a while, maybe some never to be reopened. We’ll see. Time to go home-home! I’ve been waiting for this summer amid the tests and the small drama and the weekend visits. I’m ready to sleep in a room that has, in these past few years, been taken over by Tinkerbell sheets and more stuffed toys than I could imagine. I’m excited to be back in a place where everything is seven minutes away from each other. I’m ready for the comfort of small(ish) town memories, like the gazebo and the old baseball field, still just the same as it was fifteen years ago when I was all over the place and my dad was my first-ever coach. And the kids – I cannot wait to see their faces! I have more love in my heart than I know what to do with for my four sweet, sweet kiddos; it’s only multiplied and strengthened since August when I had to say goodbye. What joy! And finally, I’m expectant as I pray over and alongside my mother, such an incredible woman of God. Waiting in the complete dependence that we have in the Lord, and waiting to be lifted up again in His honor. I know it will happen! Pushing with those Sun Stand Still prayers expecting big, big things as we serve Him. I’m ready to fight through a Psalm 56 season. This is a season of growth and maybe quite a bit of solitude. Lay it on me.
So here’s to living life in maybes. Here’s to one last look at my empty bedroom – and to yet another hello to a highway I could drive with my eyes closed. Here’s to things you would never know and things you would never expect.
See you in three months, whoever you are and whoever you will be.
