good-byes

I was at a wedding with my college friends about a month ago, and over Sunday brunch we started talking about good-byes. One of my friends had gone out to the car without saying good-bye to any of us; her husband explained that she had done this on purpose, because she didn't like saying good-byes. (You know how it is, you have a group of ten or fifteen people and everyone has to hug everyone else and then sometimes enough time passes that you pass the good-bye stage and enter plain old hanging out stage, and then you have to start the good-byes all over again. It can be exhausting.)

Someone else told a story about a couple other college friends who, on a beach in California (at the end of a college friends weekend together), suddenly sprinted away from the rest of the group, calling good-byes over their shoulder, got into their car, and drove away. I guess they didn't want to deal with the good-bye process either.

I get that. I say so many good-byes, and most of the time I would rather skip the whole production. And in my mind, most good-byes are really just see-you-laters. (At least for other Christians, this is true.) I've even started saying "See you later" instead of "Good-bye" a lot of the time-- which may strike some people as weird, say, when I'm flying off to a different continent and we really have no idea when we'll meet again.

In this particular conversation over brunch I said something about how most good-byes were really just see-you-laters, as we are all going to see each other in Heaven. To me, that's a really comforting thought-- that so many of the relationships I have here, in which there never seems to be enough time and people I love always seem to be too far away-- are really just the prelude to the real relationships that I'm going to have with people in Heaven. It's comforting that there's going to be something infinitely better and more whole after all this crazy coming and going and moving around and away, here on Earth. It's comforting that our lives here really are just a mist that appears for a little while, and that all the pain of missing people and not having the people I love around is going to be just a distant memory in the light of eternity, when we're going to have all the time I would ever want just to hang out and enjoy each other.

But this thought of "See you in Heaven!" struck all my friends as really funny, as if I expected my friends to get flattened by buses shortly after they walked out the front door, and they had quite a field day with it. You know, waving to each other and saying "See you in Heaven!" as various people departed. Oh well, I knew what I meant. And Priscilla (the only other Third Culture Kid in the room!) did too.


I was thinking about this again last night as I said another good-bye. Here is a picture of my small group. We meet every week in theory but sometimes we cancel and with all the traveling and crazy schedules that people have sometimes it's many weeks that I don't see certain people. I haven't been at small group in a month or so, actually. But last night we had everyone over here (I made falafel for the first time ever, a mountain of it that all got eaten, and fattoush, and it was great), and we were almost all here. (Missing Jen who defended her dissertation and ran the Boston marathon in the last week, and Bennett who plays his string bass in several different ensembles and had practice.)

We took a picture, as we it was Marcel and Anina's last night (standing in the back next to J and I). They are from Switzerland (he's actually a pastor, working on a PhD here), have been here a year and were hoping to stay for several, but life has not worked out that way. I will miss them!! Trading cooking tips and ideas with Anina, talking about the Gospel with Marcel, hearing stories about the very idiosyncratic place that is Switzerland and trying to explain America, with both of them. I will miss their gifts of fine Swiss chocolate and their graciousness. (Theirs is the only small group house where we actually sit at a table to eat; the rest of our houses we have to sit on couches and chairs and wherever, which I think mildly shocked our classy Swiss friends.) I learned so much, and we laughed a lot. A whole lot. I'm so glad they've been here to share our lives.

There's always a ton of change afoot in that group-- just in those who were there last night we have a 3-week old marriage, an engagement to someone on the other side of the country, a move this week across the world, two of us applying to PhD programs (both with dreams deferred, at least for now), and six of us looking for jobs! Last night I looked around to realize that only one person in the room actually had a stable job that he expected to be in a year from now! (Although his firm just laid off 20% of the staff...) Crazy times we live in. We pray a lot for trust of God and His ways.

I guess that's all for today. I'm thankful for friends, even the ones who enter and leave my life far too quickly. And I'm thankful that we will meet again.