Family

Burke Church

by mary white
08/18/15
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For the bulk of my career, my car has been my office; traveling to and from home visits, school visits, long distance transports to appointments.  In the olden days, when “hard to reach” was still a thing, I depended on co-workers to track me down for anything urgent.  You can imagine the kind of anxiety this produced when our babies were small and my husband was also out on the road.   As payphones became passe in light of the new (yet unreliable) cell phone, even carrying a beeper did not accomplish much as, once beeped, I could hardly ever locate a phone.

I work hard to give my heart to people, not things.  A good piece of jewelry can waylay me but, in general, I try to gather humans as my treasure.  The feelings I have for my cell phone are complicated, though.  Simultaneously loving and hating this intrusive lime-green mechanism, I become hysterical if it is missing. While I judge myself for overly-connecting with an object, I am also quite aware of what my phone represents…..a long-awaited lifeline to those I hold dear.

For better or for worse, goodbyes are a recurring theme in my columns.  I don’t know what I would do without this space to ruminate and lick my wounds.  As of this writing, my life is surrounded by goodbyes; 5 to be exact and all within a week.  Always, the passage is what plagues me; the breath-holding shuttle from one life to another.  A line from Walk in the Rain by Passenger rings honest and heavy to me, “Where the photograph’s smile and I’m still someone’s child”.  Who will I be now?  If my house is silent, will I still be a mother?  If there are no relatives at my table, will I no longer be a daughter?

I say goodbye to my Pastor, this week; the man who baptized me.  And, with his departure, I too will leave our beloved church; my second home. It is not anger or protest that moves me, just a longing to pause, to regroup.  In these last weeks, our Pastor has led us into goodbye, shepherding without bitterness, showing us how while putting his hurt to the side.  I look around our church, white and wooden and warm with homemade masterpieces and a simple cross.  I envision the aftermath of our Pastor’s departure…...some staying, others going like an Army divided and leaderless, shakily carrying Jesus into disparate lands.

When our Pastor first announced that he was leaving, our middle daughter asked me, “What are you afraid of, Mom?”  I am still working that out.  I am afraid of being in a church where I did not first fall in love with Jesus, where I did not first touch a Bible.  I am afraid of being in a church without my children, without us rushing in late and fighting; where our middle son has never laid his heavy, curly head on me and slept, where our middle daughter has never drawn flowers and love notes on my hands, where our youngest son has never batted his eyes at me, never made me cartoons and crosses, where my oldest son has never glared at me for getting him up early and for letting his brother sleep through service. I fear it being over.

These past few years have been tough on our family; a season of hurt and fear and vigilance.  As the other side of so much leaving looms, I know that it will be years before we fully recover. My heart shrinks with each goodbye….like an anti-Grinch, miserly and selfish, so absorbed in my own pain that I do not recognize precious others in theirs. I stand outside myself, frozen and grateful that we have survived, that we have stayed together, that I have acquired some humility. But being on high alert has had a surprising cost, I don’t know who to be without it. Something, many things, have come to an end and, for a time, I will stumble blindly through this hushed after-life.  But, I know that what I have received, what I take with me has nothing to do with a building.