Every few years or so my family gets together in one place. This year it was a cabin in the mountains. We are too large and too loud for anyone's sanity to fit inside with all of us, so everyone leaves their's at the door.
We get together and eat Portuguese fried dough and fresh baked cookies. We embrace. We might play some games. We smile. We laugh. We marvel at how nephews have facial hair and how they've grown heads taller than the aunts. We are astounded by how the neices are suddenly too big to climb up into the laps of their mommies.We tell the same stories we've all heard over and over again. We laugh harder at them as we get older.
Somehow in the midst of all the chaos, we are able to peel away the months of time and change from one another and find the precious souls of the ones we love beneath those layers of time apart.
And then there is the leaving...
Leaving my family makes me think thoughts that are too big for my brain, and makes me feel things that are too big for my heart. The big question I always land on when we part? "God, why did you let me splinter my family like this?" It's a question that plagues me every single time I leave.
You see, when I was 18 years old, my parents let me come to Florida on a trip with a friend of mine. Young, dumb, and partying in a new city, were were too young to rent a car, so we decided to try to hitch a ride. My crazy heart fell for a guy here equally young and equally invincible--the kind, gentle-spirited biological father of my daughters--who pulled over to give us young ladies a ride. It was that relationship that made me move to Florida, convincing a sister of mine to move with me. My parents followed soon after--snowbirds at first, but then moving here full time after. I had no idea at that time that I was changing the dynamic of my earthly family forever. But I feel now, the grief that my older and wiser siblings surely felt when I packed up that u-haul, wide-eyed and excited for a life anywhere but there. They knew things would never be the same.
And so each time we part--the tears fall. The good bye hugs always last longer than the hello ones, and my feet always find themselves running across the stones to try to sneak in a last one before we go. Inevitably that question surfaces again, as it does each time. Usually there is no answer, and only in recent years have I been able to draw comfort in the fact that this life is just a blink and that the time we don't have together here will be redeemed in Heaven.
But this time, when I got back home and laid down in my bed, my heart cried out and asked the Lord for an answer, much to my surprise, he gave me one.
"You would never have been mine if I left you there, and I've got work for you to do for Me here."
Every time He speaks to me, the things He says are often so crystal clear but somehow I can't see them. As soon as I processed the words, I realized that they were the obvious truth.
My family is interesting--amazing, supportive, loving. I know if I ever needed a place to go, I could knock on any siblings door and they would welcome me inside. In fact, most of the time we don't even bother to knock. My family woos me into a state of worldly present-ness. I am a different person in their midst--I turn far too much away from the face of God so that I can soak in every moment of what is happening around me. I don't think I have ever really been able to pray or focus on God and eternal things in their presence. They become my security net--in place of the only security that is real for anyone.
But forced out of my comfort zone, Jesus is able to get my attention. I thinks that true for all of us. He is able to speak to us in new ways. He woos us to be His own and to call us to His higher purposes that we might otherwise ignore. People are always asking why God allows for sorrow and for suffering, and sometimes I think it's because when our hearts are really hurting, that's when we are finally paying attention. Anyone who has experienced deep sadness or grief knows that it feels like a physical breaking of the heart. But be encouraged. It's through those very cracks that God's love is able to flow freely in.
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