What We Leave at the Door
In preparing to travel back to Tennessee and South Carolina for Thanksgiving, I was asking the Lord for new perspective in my grief. Thinking of entering our family’s familiar gathering spaces filled me with apprehension, although I knew there would be unity in feeling these spaces would never be the same again. From five years ago to last year to this year, it looks different, it feels different, and we love different. Bigger somehow. With tears always.
Still, I knew there would be love. So much love. And for some reason, I was dreading the tears that would fall as we gathered, acknowledging what was and would never be again. Dreading the memories we would fill within the space they once did.
But Jesus, being a friend to the brokenhearted and one who always draws near, revealed something to me about the people filling the chairs around our Thanksgiving table. They brought sacrifice, humility, service, and more love than could fit in the room. But these weren’t characteristics they donned just to come to Thanksgiving. No, these are people who find their identity as children of God and walk the narrow path, knowing what is easy is not always better, all the while serving and loving the person next to them because this is what we were made to do. And the evidence is in what they left at the door to be present for our meal.
A man caring for his father approaching end-of-life while simultaneously bearing the burdens of a colleague in ways not many would humble themselves to even consider. Spreading himself so very thin, but serving in a way that displays the deep love of his Father to all who know him.
Three women caring for parents who make full-time caregiving feel daunting and at times impossible. But all three retreat to the prayer room, filling themselves with the Holy Spirit to renew them once more and return to what is guaranteed to test them, but filled with honor and true sacrifice.
Parents raising children on the spectrum & the village behind them, spouses learning new routes of devotion, newfound effort in all kinds of familial relationships, and all over the room love erupting in new ways - ways it never quite has before. As we mingled it became so clear. We have drawn close, clung tight, and refused to let each other go. “I love you more” has become the banner of our family, and each of us means it the most. We’ve journeyed together rather than apart. Joy and sorrow - they’re so deeply intertwined for us it’s no longer how they dance, they’re just one. So beautifully one.
And in between all of this, we gathered for a meal, leaving everything at the door and simply showing up to the table. It was then my eyes were opened to what’s been overlooked in the fog of anticipation and wave of grief. The mourning we all carry has also become the love of who we’ve lost in action. It’s everywhere we turn. The evidence of love being shared is the extension of their stories. It’s not moving on, but forever moving forward. Allowing a new story to unfold. This is the creativity of God, and He invites us to hold open our books and follow the pen, even when it doesn’t look how we imagined it would.