“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
-C.S. Lewis
I’ve had way too many goodbyes in my life. I question whether it’s a normal amount or not. It seems that eventually I could say it with numbness, that it would be easy, that it wouldn’t make me cry, that loss could be accepted as natural.
But that’s never the case…
Saying goodbye to family as they return to their home states after holidays together.
Saying goodbye to my Papa as he drove 3 hours back home after coming to take me trick or treating.
Saying goodbye to friends when I had to move around as a child.
Saying goodbye to a relationship where it was the only time a man loved me.
Saying goodbye to a music degree.
Saying goodbye to my parents on move-in day of college.
Saying goodbye to Peru as I didn’t stay long term for missions there.
Saying goodbye to the woman who discipled me as she left our college ministry.
Saying goodbye to the horse I trained and then sold.
Saying goodbye to my new friends and family that I worked at camp with in Maryland.
Saying goodbye to potentially the only opportunity to be married.
Saying goodbye to my co-workers at Stewart’s Bistro as I left Wake Forest.
Saying goodbye to the man I called one of my best friends for 5 years.
Saying goodbye to my best friend Ashley as I left for the World Race.
Saying goodbye to my second family, the Craigs, as I left for the World Race.
Saying goodbye to my little brother as my family left me at Launch for the World Race.
And now saying goodbye to strangers that I’ve only known for a short while. Strangers who became family instantaneously.
Not only that, I still have to do this 10 plus more times…
As much as I would like to be as cold hearted as the lyrics of Sam Smith’s “Way to good at goodbyes”. I can not. My heart loves deeply, my heart connects deeply, and with no regrets… I’m not too good at goodbyes.
