We had our 25th anniversary celebration at church last evening and it was wonderful to see faces of friends that brought back such memories... but I was also really missing Trenton. It was so hard not to have him with us... in part because he didn't have a ride home from college and there wasn't time for us to pick him up before the party started... he wanted to be there... but partly we felt we needed to choose to let him find his own way home this time... God had asked me to do a really hard thing by not solving the problem for him.
We'll be going to get him in a few hours and he will be with us for Harvest Sunday, but I am so sad he missed out on the party... I don't like this new way of being a family. It hurts.
I do believe; however, that it is what I am called to do at this point... to continue to love from this distance and suffer the ache of being lonely for him... there is no easy way to walk through the separation and the growing apart. It's hard. Even harder to choose to not offer relief to his situation of finding a ride home to be with family and friends.
And to think this is only the beginning.... there are more goodbyes to come.
Reflecting on our past and our journey together as a group of people has been provoking... it stirs all kinds of grief and gladness... and possibly stirs some hope that this is not the way it will always be... I can't imagine being free to celebrate without ache....
I am grateful for the small comforts He sends to me in the midst of my struggle... yesterday it was a ladybug... a symbol to me personally about how much God loves me and is pleased with me... I wept... how kind of Him to remember me in that way.
Being faithful to do the hard work of listening for His Spirit's leading and choosing the path that is difficult... and one that I really don't understand (it often doesn't make sense to me...) but choosing to obey where I feel led as an act of trust in His timing and His purposes.... then to be offered the small gift that reminds me that He is with me and has suffered pain and loss of His own Son... all for love's sake.... what a gift!
