Goodbye's are Tough

We have been up till' 4 a.m. these past 4 nights practicing and preparing for the tour and good Lord are we tired. Tomorrow is the first Sunday in 3 years that I won't be on staff at Williams Trace Baptist Church. It is an odd feeling. I am not setting my alarm for 6 a.m., I am not laying out uncomfortable clothes and I am not running the worship service through my head 200 times to make sure I have transitions or making sure I contacted all the band/orchestra players for the Sunday Morning Bash.

I will miss playing with my friends. Such great people.

Moving on has always been hard for me. I remember when I was 13 years old and in the ninth grade. We had just moved to Alabama and it was our 3rd move in 3 years. I was tired of moving. Tired of making friends and saying goodbye to them. I thought we were there to stay.

When my Dad announced to the Church that we were leaving I snuck out of the service, went to our car and cried my eyes out. It was heart-wrenching. My youth Pastor and the youth group came out to the car after and cried with me. I loved my friends. I loved our house and the girl I had a crush on at school was just starting to give me the eye. It was the best of times for popularity and friends and all around the worst of times for leaving.

The church kids knew about the move but as far as school went, I had moved before and I knew that people act differently when they know you are leaving. They distance themselves from you. Suddenly you get left out of invites. Your friends can even start to get a little cold toward you. This wasn't going to happen this time. When I found out we were moving from Alabama my freshman year, I didn't tell a soul. Not one person at my School. If the teachers wouldn't have announced it to the class my last day, no one would have known until the next day that I was gone. This upset some really good friends of mine. Somehow in the end, they understood.

I didn't realize until later how unhealthy this was. It caused me to not make a single friend at the next school for almost two years. I went from becoming VERY outgoing to a total and complete recluse. I wore long-sleeved shirts in the summer and sat in a Library reading-booth for lunch. It wasn't until I joined Choir the next year that I came back out of my shell and started making friends again.

Saying goodbye is still hard for me. It is painful. But that is normal. It means that I am not afraid to Love and be Loved. When you Love people you risk something. In a weird way, when you choose to Love in this life, you choose suffering. "The pain now is part of the happiness then."