on moving and dying

It was just over a week ago, we sat down to Haiti casserole and applesauce.  Silence ruled our supper.  Even Leah noted the quiet.


"So...what are your latest thoughts on moving?"  My husband's question flickers across the candle in the center of the table, full of the heat of all the words we haven't spoken.  I put my forehead in my fist, finger the napkin in my lap.


"I think..."
"I think...moving is a lot like dying."


B.J.'s shoulders sag, his brows rise.  My statement demands an explanation.


"It's like this.  Let's say I've been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  I believe Heaven is glorious.  I want to go there.  But it's still an unknown place, while everything here is familiar, and much of it is dear to me.  And there are the good-byes and the pain that comes with dying...and with moving.  I believe we're being called to go, just like you do.  And I know the Lord will bless us there, though we'll have our share of struggles, too.  It's the thought of leaving that terrifies me...that hurts so bad I don't want to go, just so I can avoid the pain."


B.J. nods.  "I know what you mean."


And then my lips start feeling rubbery, swollen.  I close my eyes, and all that heat runs over.  


I feel this way now, like I'm dying.  I rewrite Dickison in my head.  Small things are counted sweetest by those about to leave.  To comprehend your blessings requires sorest need.


I run for my camera just to capture Marie's curls clinging to her cap.

And though there are lunches to pack, breakfast to make, a diaper to change, and I'm still wrapped up in my pink terry robe, I pause at the window and watch the sun climb the sky over the place my childhood plays.

And when the kids dress-up or catch chickens for the umpteenth day in a row and beg me to take a photo, I comply, though it's nearly dark and we've not begun supper.  What if, I wonder, this is the last time?

And when Leah sings in chapel with her kindergarten classmates, and Marie tells me that Kara is her favorite girl in the world to see, I can't swallow for the lump large in my throat.

But is this not how we are called to live each day, thanking God today for the gifts that He gives?


For right from the start of our life, we are dying.

Like as a father pitieth his children,

so the LORD pitieth them that fear Him.

 For He knoweth our frame;

He remembereth that we are dust.

 As for man, his days are as grass:

as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;

and the place thereof shall know it no more.

 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting

upon them that fear Him,

and His righteousness unto children's children;

 To such as keep His covenant,

and to those that remember His commandments to do them.

Psalm 103:13-18