Sunday, December 4, 2011

A Life of Goodbyes ..

A young lady headed to Central America as a medical missionary used that term tonight at church in an interview with our Pastor when asked about the hardest thing about leaving.  She said her life had been "a life of goodbyes .."  That term really hit a deep point inside me and I realized that that very reality is what I would take a few minutes to write about as we move into the Christmas season. 

When you think about life, all of it, you realize life really boils down to relationships. It begins with parents, siblings, extended family then to teachers, schoolmates, pastors, bosses, leaders, etc, etc.  With the ebb and flow of life, the order of magnitude of "goodbyes" exponentially increases but as a natural, not without pain at times, course of events for you move on to the next band of friends. If your life encompasses a career of station movement, then the trajectory and velocity of the goodbyes escalates even more quickly.  Natural, normal but at times unsettling.

Then there is the great separator; death.  Part of this I realize is the aging process as you look back and parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, school friends, church friends all begin to populate a list that seems to increase with every increasing velocity.  Being in a great church with a large segment of older friends and singing a good deal at the church, I am asked to sing at funerals of these sweet people.  Singing for my mother's funeral was one of those really significant moments in my life to be singing songs she loved standing next to her coffin but able to smile knowing she would have been pleased.  Death is no respecter for we will all face that in one way or the other so it is about not avoiding the reality but believing there is truly an even better life after this one.

A "life of goodbyes" is a wonderful sentiment when you think about it.  I will always remember Traci Warner for  using that great term for when I think of the hundreds of thousands of people I have been blessed to experience in my life and so many ways, it simply amazes.  Facebook is a great example to let you realize the essence of the importance of friends. How you can reach out to encourage, to educate, to teach, to laugh, to cry; the whole spectrum of life is about friends when you really stop and think about it.  But the most cherished band of all is the family!

I watched a mother's tears tonight as her daughter Traci, spoke and you could feel the pain of knowing her sweet girl was about to be gone for years to a far land.  I honestly had not stopped to think about what my parents must have felt when I began my life journey with moving all over the world.  I now even more realize how blessed we are to have our two children and their families so close to us and what a joy that is but so easily taken for granted.

So I will close with asking you to take a few minutes and think and reflect on the many lives that come into and then out of your life journey and how you left that touch.  Tomorrow as a new week begins, look around you at the lives you are touching and how you are being touched.  I love to tell the story of the graduation speaker at Kent State when my son graduated. I was jet lagged and did not want to go but did. I saw the speaker was from India with a name that was fifty letters long and that many letters of Phd's next to that.  He came quietly to the platform and said, "I am a part of every person I have ever met ..."  BAM, he had me for that is so very true.  My students, the people I sing to, work with, meet, pass on the street; all are part of the journey so enjoy the journey. I will for I realize more richly, life is a set of goodbyes!

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