Missouri Farewell

Home place

Here I am in Missouri, and this time of sorting and packing is definitely bittersweet. I love this state, our home for 23 years, with its lush green fields, billowing trees and misty mornings alight with birdsong and peace.

This gracious old house with its high ceilings and transom windows holds nine years of accumulated memories (and 30 years of accumulated stuff, I might add). But I am leaving all this--leaving it for good this time, and that is hard. Hard, yes, but as I sort and pack, if I think about staying, my heart sinks.

The trail leads ever onward

 I love this place, this house, these friends that are part of my history and who I am. But it is time.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven..."

This is what I ponder as I pack: there is "...a time to keep, and a time to cast away..." and it is comforting to know that the time of keeping--the accumulating and the dreams that accompanied that time--were good and right. It is not a commentary on the worth of a thing to let it go. It is a recognition of times and seasons.

Looking off toward the pond

Here now are the last golden days before the door closes on a season. Bittersweet. Precious. A time to weep, even mourn, as one mourns the ending of something lovely--something that will never again be here in this Missouri place. Those things are part of me, and though now perhaps they are passing into the realm of memories, those years are just as valid and valuable as today and tomorrow. In fact, they are what fitted me for today and positioned me for tomorrow. In those years, it was a time to gather. Now is a time to distribute...

Morning fog on a morning jog

I wish endings were more fun. This lying to rest of a myriad of things, this saying goodbye to an era that spans my children's growing up years feels at times like an arrow in my heart. But to stay on here in this beautiful place does not bring back those years. The children will not magically become babes again because I hold on to a house. And when I contemplate holding on, a different kind of pang assails me, one that feels old and tired and finished. A mortal wounding, a deciding to pitch my tent and watch while all the adventures and explorations of my future fade away and I am left with only house and land. And that is not enough for me.

Barn and granary

So though it is a time of farewells, it is also a time of beginnings, of new horizons, and memories to be made. With everything I "cast away", my hands are freer to receive what I have yet to know. Yes, it is a time to weep, but also to laugh and to dance for what lies ahead. A time to love what has been and a time to love what is to come. This season of farewells will pass, as is the nature of seasons, and I will remember with peace all the years and friends grown dear in this place.

Pond and barn, rolling fields, and wide-open skies