Everyone who I care about the most in my life is going through the same thing at the same time.
Including me!
I’m not sure where it began.
Dad, I guess. He got sick. Then he got worse. Then he died and left Mom to adjust to a new life without him after almost more than fifty years. Major changes came and she is learning to live a different life without him. She misses him and he is still there in some ways but it is not the same.
Then Sarah left western New York to come here and do the work that she was born to do. And as soon as she got started, those of us who she came to do it with left. So it is not what she thought … but then again it is. The work is important and her friends are here for her but not on a daily basis; an in your face basis.
Jeremy, my son, left his job as Athletic Director of a private school in Athens, Georgia and he is figuring out what he wants to do next. His wife --- my brilliant daughter-in-law --- is doing the same thing. She is changing jobs. They are putting their house on the market. It’s all blowing in the wind.
My daughter Kristen has worked for other people her whole life. She’s made them a lot of money, most often at her own expense. Now she is determined to start her own business. So she’s gone to the bank and she has done the things that you need to do to get started and I haven’t seen her this resolved since she was a sports great in High School.
Chelsea is a senior at the University of Georgia. Charges are biting her heels.
Keller Deal’s last day at Union Mission was yesterday. Today she begins a new job and a new future unfolds.
And I have earned a Ph.D. in radical change over the past few years. Lose a CFO. Kill a major program while starting another one. Lose a wife. Resign a job. I’ve beat them all!
And the other people whom I love the most are changing jobs, or trying to,
living in new places,
moving out with someone or moving in with someone …
We all have a tie that binds. Loving one another through massive changes.
My friend Jodi told me recently that she told her daughter Rachel that if she ever wore the wrong numbered socks, the entire time/space continuum would be thrown off. Rachel always matches up the Monday with Monday and Tuesday with Tuesday because she isn’t going to be the one responsible for throwing the entire time/space continuum out of whack.
And while Rachel did her part, the rest of us have done serious damage to it.
What was is no more.
What will be is in front of us but we’re not really certain of what it is.
But you know what? It’s ok. We all have each other. We’re all going through it together. We all love one another dearly. What else you need?
And the future is going to be better than the past. Because the future always is. And we all will have one another there.
And I cannot think of a better way to live it on out. I cannot think of any other group of people that I would want to live it out with.
Though Rachel is going to have to teach me this whole sock matching thing. Mondays have always slammed into Wednesdays in my life. Thursdays became Fridays. I never knew what happened to Sundays. I believe that I have a lot to learn from her.
And who knew that I was the one who threw off the whole time/space continuum?
Along with the people that I love the most!
