Hiatus

My sincerest apologies to those who are kind enough to glance at this little diary every now and then. Due to an unfortunate and sudden rendezvous between my laptop and an overly aggressive glass of juice, I haven’t had the luxury of banging away at my keyboard during the occasional late night when sleep eludes me. Therefore, since it would appear that my own computer won’t be of much use to me any time soon, I’ll be moving my writer’s workshop to the community room of the Jackson House, my temporarily blank pages to its over-sized computer screen. And I’ll try to catch you up a little on the stories I’ve been withholding for the past month and a half. But, for now, I’ll just give you a sense of how I’m doing.

Life’s been feeling very much like a storm-battered ship lately. We’re in the middle of a lot of turnover here at J-House and, while I love the folks who are here very much, I’ve bid farewell to quite a few members of my family in the past few weeks, and it’s made for a heavy heart at times.

Admittedly, I’ve never been very good at saying goodbye. As a result, I usually opt out of saying it at all. “I’ll be seeing you” tends to be my phrase of choice; it postpones the inevitable reality that life isn’t slowing down, people are moving on, and relationships are changing rapidly. Of course, our lives are punctuated by a series of hellos and goodbyes. They essentially form the parameters of all of our human contact. In one way or another, you and any person you’ve ever come across have greeted each other; something within you sought out and reached something within that other person, whether he’s the man you married or the guy who changed your oil last week. Where you both went after that initial contact is a matter of personal choice and chance, I suppose. But, when everything is said and done, you and your friend will part ways. Maybe it’ll be death that separates you. Maybe an argument and a broken heart. Maybe a smile, a handshake, and a hand-off of keys.

Or maybe it’ll be a new school, a new job, a new opportunity. Perhaps life will ultimately be what comes between you. And, in many ways, that’s something to be celebrated. If love means truly, selflessly, and actively seeking the greatest good for another person, then moving on to that which God has planned for us not only calls for happiness, but for rejoicing.

And, as I stroll down this shady old Kentucky dirt road with these incredible individuals, I will rejoice with them. I’ll get excited with them about tomorrow. I’ll smile as they embrace the gifts of looking back down this road they’ve traveled on – far past the point at which I’m standing – and of acknowledging how much they’ve grown and how far they’ve come. And then I’ll smile until it hurts as they head toward a path that breaks away from the road that I’m on. With a final hug (and more than a few tears on my part), I’ll watch them disappear through the trees and stride toward a new set of challenges and triumphs. Then I’ll link arms with the ones who are still on this blessed patch of dirt, and we’ll keep walking. Soon enough, one of those paths will emerge from the woods and produce a new sister here and a new brother there, and I’ll fall in love all over again.

This moment – the one between the hellos and the goodbyes – will never happen again. I think, really, that its passing is the thing that I mourn. But the sun that shines on us as we walk now is that same that did when we walked with the ones who’ve left. The wildflowers growing on the side of the road, the muddy lake up at Camp AJ, our roof (above which the shooting stars and fireflies are brightest) – all of these things bear witness to this moment and to all passing ones. These fragments of time are indelibly a part of who I am and who I have every hope of becoming. And when my little path comes up on my current dirt road, I’ll know that I loved with every inch of my heart. And I’ll have left nothing on the table.