Over the past few months, I’ve had a lot of emotions about our upcoming move: denial, excitement, fear, hope, anxiety, lots of stress, and some peripheral sadness. But it wasn’t until today that I felt true sadness about our move.
I’ve never been emotional about our moves before. Always excited for the next thing, without any strong attachments to the previous place. (Excluding the circumstances of our move back from Germany, of course) I thought I’d be okay this time as well, although we were both sad at the idea of leaving our church and friends.
The morning started out fine, getting as much done as we could before hanging out with some friends before church. William was singing in the choir, so he left before me. I did a few more things around the house before heading to church alone.
As I knelt to pray before Mass, I thanked God for all he had given us through St. Mary’s in the past three years. A huge wave of sadness washed over me, and I found myself trying really hard not to cry in the middle of church.
After Mass ended, I went back to the narthex to meet William. We walked back through the nave to get to the north entrance. As we talked, I began to cry again. When it was time to leave, we crossed back through the church. As I paused to genuflect, I once again felt tears welling up. I just couldn’t believe this was my last time at St. Mary’s.
When we first started attending St. Mary’s almost 3 years ago, we had been apart from the church for awhile. On the day in November that was our official “coming back,” we had faith that everything that had happened in the past year was for a reason, and that good things would come from it.
But we had no idea that night, that visit to the church, the amazing things God was setting into motion, with a switch in the form of an invitation for William to join the choir. And as I reflect on everything that stemmed from that night, I can’t help but be profoundly thankful that we were brought here, and profoundly sad that we are leaving.
Today a friend compared traveling to dying. You prepare as much as you can, but you can never get everything done. Some things just get left behind. And there’s nothing you can do about it anymore. To continue the metaphor, we’ve prepared everything we can for our journey to our next life. We don’t know what is coming next, but we have hope and faith that it will be good. We’ve said goodbye to our friends, and we hope to see them again.
I really clung to the German goodbye today. Auf Wiedersehen. Until we see each other again.
