In Between Hello and Goodbye….

Five years is a long time, yet it isn’t nearly long enough.

My sister leaves for Memphis in 3 months.  I have know for quite sometime but tonight it is real.  For whatever reason the deadline looms…

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and I cried the whole way home. 

Memphis isn’t all that far, about a days drive.   Tonight, however it feels like the other side of the world.   It is too far for quick visits, a dinner date.   Too far for “Can you watch my kids?” phone calls.  

Each goodbye feels more permanent.   Each time I leave the driveway brings me closer to the final time.

Isn’t it funny how blessing is overshadowed by hurt?    How quickly we are tempted to replace thankfulness with questioning…I am so willing to forget the blessing of 5 years, the miracle that brought her from our home state of Tennessee to Michigan, and instead to question a Sovereign loving God…Why?

She is called there.  I am called here.   She who is so much part of me is leaving.  

But as she goes there to serve with her surgeon husband, and while I stay to serve here to serve with mine, I know that He who calls is faithful.  And I choose between tears, in this time between hello and goodbye, to accept and be thankful.

…Assuredly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My sake and the gospels, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time…or in the age to come, eternal life.      Mark 10:29-30