There are always things to miss

I remember first listening to the audio version of Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall while we drew scores of paper dolls at the little table by the wood stove.


"Did Mama sing every day?  Every single day?"


We listened to it last nearly one year ago, in February, as we made our way home from MI, the trip we thought might help change Dad's mind but didn't.


Sarah comes from Maine wearing a yellow bonnet, and Caleb and Anna wonder if she will stay and be their mother.  Sarah misses the sea.  Sarah goes to town by herself one day, and Caleb is scared that she's not going to come back.  When she does, he cries and tells her how he had worried that she had gone home to the sea.  And Sarah says, "I will always miss my old home.  But there are always things to miss, no matter where you are...and the truth is, I would miss you more."


I'm going to miss waking to the creak of the wood stove as my husband starts the fire each winter morning; and the sunrise I can watch with nothing in the way but the ol' Chinese Elm that lords it over the front yard, scattering sticks each time a breeze blows.


I'm going to miss how at dusk in late June over Teunissen's field there are fireflies as far as the eye can see, twinkling like sequins in green gossamer.


I'm going to miss the way the kids chant "Lord, bless this food and grant that we..." in unison at dinner every other Sunday at Mom's, watching my Mom and sisters file into church, and all those familiar faces I love lining the pews.


I'm going to miss Shadow roaming the four acres on which this house sits, hunting the ditches for asparagus each spring, and walking up the road to Mom and Dad's or down the road to Mud Crik on summer nights.


I'm going to miss debating with Dr. J. and having this baby in the same room in which the others were born.


I'm going to miss seeing Jerron almost every day, watching him grow up, and hearing the putt-putt of Dad's Honda coming up the driveway, him and Jer just stopping because they've got nothing else to do.


I'm going to miss chapels, graduations, singspirations, and mid-week lunches with Erin and Michelle, chatting about discipline or food prep or whatever else happens to be on one or more of our minds.


I'm going to miss the way I can sit in the kiddie pool in the middle of summer in my old bathing suit and not have to wonder who's going to drive by, because rarely does anyone take this road, and afternoons at River's Bend with the sun beating down and sand in everyone's snacks.


The chicken coop I've cared for since the third grade and the crop dusters that put on private air shows just for us.  And the way, come autumn, the kids watch combines as intently as they would a circus. 


But there are always things to miss, no matter where you are.


And if I didn't go, I would miss life in another part of God's beautiful world, in another congregation of His people.


I would miss watching my husband give his all to a position about which he's very excited, and leaving and cleaving to him like I never have before.


I would miss watching our family learn and grow together in a new-to-us place upheld by the love of new-to-us people, and I would miss seeing how God made us just the right shape to fit needs there that need to be filled.


I would miss all this growing and sanctifying that He's working as we walk this path, trusting in Him with all our hearts rather than leaning on our own limited understanding.


And the truth is...I would miss that more.