Over a month ago, I was driving with kids I’ve spent the summer and a lot of after school hours with for the past 8+ years. We play video games. We rejoice when finally finishing the last level of Mario Bros on the Wii after months of frustration. We try to strike out each other’s “Star Player” in the Little League World Series. We spend weeks playing XBox before I ask why their NBA players can run so much faster than my players, and they finally tell me about the “turbo” button. I have to play with the 90s All-Star teams, so I actually know who the people are and what they can do. I pick them up from school. And help them with their homework. We go to baseball games and basketball tournaments and All-Star practice, and I use them as an excuse to go to the theater to watch cartoons in 3D. Only people who really love other people get on transportable carnival rides that make those people turn upside-down and spin in circles. Especially when those people have just eaten a fried s’more. We sing Adele songs as loud as possible and accidently off key in the car.
…which is what we were doing when I cried in the dark along to the accompaniment of Adele and the boys.
In the past three weeks, I have had dates and parties and get togethers scheduled with a lot of the people with whom I’ve done my life over the past several years. My “Top Ten,” if you understand the old school Myspace reference. I’m sure there are more than 10. These people are my home.
And I’m incredibly blessed to have the kind of relationships, the kind of home that is so difficult to leave.
“Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30)
And I’m incredibly blessed to have the brothers or sisters or mother or father or children (even if they are not REALLY mine) or land that make it easy to stay.
I’m blessed to have the kinds of friends that know me and love anyway. Who know me and love me for who I am. Even when I have very little to give or things just really are not going my way. Who grow roots in the passenger seat of my car.
One thing I have struggled with over the past few weeks is that it is never going to be exactly like this ever again. Life in that secure world is never going to be just like that ever again.
But I want to go.
I am ready to go.
I want to see how powerful God is outside of the comfortable, secure world that those brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or land have created or me.
I want to breathe new air and see new things.
And I want to learn and grow and do.
I want to do my life with these new people that I’ve met. To add them to the list of people that make it hard to leave.
But even if I can’t put Larry Bird up against Lebron or watch any sixth graders play baseball or pretend I do not hear a certain couple of kids using “seen” instead of “saw” or “done” instead of “did,” I will always want to drive down the road and listen to a those kids sing, “Never mind, I’ll find someone like you…”
Because I know I won’t. I won’t ever find anyone like them. Like home.
“Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste…”
