I flipped through some familiar pages today. The kind of pages that are soft and dog eared, have a coffee stain or two, and have various eras of hand writing in the margins. I grab for this book when I’m facing a crossroad, about to begin a new adventure…which is code for when I’m lying on my bedroom floor in the fetal position with my eyes squeezed shut, pretending I never have to make a big decision ever again.
Here are the squiggly underlined and poorly bracketed words I read,
“I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it. So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”
I love those words from Donald Miller’s Through Painted Deserts. I read this same chapter every time I approach a new season or change. And each time it brings me comfort, the reminder that “everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
I remember hearing these words for the first time several years ago. I was anxious about living in a foreign country for four months and not knowing what to expect. My friend Kris read these words to me as we sat by the Guadalquivir river in Sevilla and talked about the fears and joys of our semester abroad.
Now I find similar comfort in knowing that I must leave. I don’t even have words to express all the emotions I’m feeling or the overwhelming amount of thoughts I’m thinking. I don’t have words to express how much I dread goodbyes or the extent to which I abhor the seemingly endless packing process. But the words Donald Miller does have comfort me. He says, “I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die.” And I say, “Amen.”
Because after all, “We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?” (Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts).
