The Ending Begins

Guilty Pleasure/Confession: Philip and I like the movie "Friends with Benefits" - while not a family flick (at all), we like Mila Kunes and Justin Timberlake. The film prominently features the Third Eye Blind Song, "Closing Time", and its lyrics have been on repeat in my head of late - particularly the line "...every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..." The song first made itself my ear worm when we were in Whistler before Christmas. It's become an annual tradition to spend some days at the ski mecca and I found myself in a 100% foul mood on our third day there this year because I was really struggling with the fact we would not have the trip next December. I had to have a real "suck it up, buttercup" moment with myself as I realized I was being snippy with everyone in my family as my emotions were playing pinball in my head.

Here we are. At the ending of a beginning that started 3.5 years ago when we drove away from Clemson, SC toward Vancouver, British Columbia. In 8.5 weeks (insert hyperventilation sounds) we will drive away from this place toward Marietta, Georgia, closing this chapter and beginning a new one. It's a funny feeling, actually, as our life story coincidentally aligns with lots of talk about a new calendar year. As many on social media wished the last moments of 2016 away with its epic loss of many icons of our time, I held onto those fleeting days - white knuckling in preparation for 2017. While 2016 hosted many an unanswered question regarding our family's future, the present was known - comfortable even. And 2017's arrival meant clarity of future but a soon-to-be unknown present. To be honest, these first 12 days of 2017 have been an almost constant tension between metaphorical light and dark (an unmistakably orange light, I must say, emanating from our beloved Clemson, SC - home of the college football national championship Clemson Tigers).

To date, 2017 has brought us:
-A new home
-Time with family and friends
-Family wide stomach virus
-A to-do list for the ages
-Computer hack leading to three days of scrubbing/software reinstallation
-Obstacles in the moving process
-Lots of homework to be made up

If you know me, you've heard of Montreat. It's a touch point of mine - a place where I often reclaim who I am by being reminded by wise people of who we are in the world and what we are called to do. It's a place that's uniquely mine in our family of four - and it's got an identity to me founded on milestones and grace I've experienced there. Both times it dawned on me that we may be expecting a child I was in Montreat, countless of my own birthdays I spent in Montreat, friendships I've had nearly a lifetime were founded in Montreat, premarital counseling began in Montreat. It's a place that helps me coalesce my story to its most fundamental truths and it's a place to which I travelled on the first day of 2017 to help staff a conference for 1000+ college aged people where we dug deep and wrestled with what it looks like to embrace God's plan for radical diversity in the world. It was a time of challenge and grace and our second keynote speaker, Valarie Kaur (www.valariekaur.com), reframed for me these dark times of endings when she said something akin to, "What if we are not in the darkness of the tomb, but instead the darkness of the womb?" Lightbulbs erupted in my head - we are on the precipice of new life, rebirth! She reminded me that the hardest, most painful part of labor when delivering a child - the place where you feel engulfed by a "ring of fire" as she called it - is transition. Coincidence? I think not.

Valarie went on to say that in those moments that we feel surrounded by that ring of fire, if we listen closely, we'll hear those who've poured love into us throughout our story and even before our story began whispering into our ear - "You. Are. Brave." So becomes the word to which I will cling in the impending unsure present - brave. It's a word I claim for our children, for Philip and myself. And it's the word I'll repeat to myself as we push through, with all our might, our own transition. And I'll listen carefully for the whispers - voices like Alicia who reminded me to allow my tears to be baptismal waters of new life and abundant grace; voices like Kirsten who gifted me with a bracelet that reads "enjoy the journey"; voices like Sam and Zach who sang about how our story is still being written; voices like Paul who reminded me that much of our work is done by staying present in the conversation; voices like Valarie who reminded me that I am brave.

This ending has indeed begun - but it is already giving birth to new life - and I'm grateful to push through and enjoy the journey with the three I love most alongside me. Vancouver, you will be sorely missed, but you have taught us that we are brave and you have prepared us for the next chapter we have already begun to write in Georgia. Thank you.