Tonight I sit and listen to the moaning of the wind in the shrubs outside my window. There’s a misty sort of coldness in the breeze, and a melancholy fog has settled into the low places in the road. The last of the autumn leaves are rustling amidst the skeleton branches of the trees out in the yard, and the clouds have obscured the light of the moon and the stars.

Yesterday the moon was beautiful and the stars were bright. Yesterday there was no rain, no fog, no moaning wind to interrupt the stillness of a crisp night…but yesterday is gone.

All of the yesterdays are gone.

It’s incredible to me—sometimes frightening—how quickly things can change. Babies are born, children grow up, young folks marry, create new homes, new families, new lives…and then one day, they die…and the cycle of life continues.

But somewhere along the line, I hope that there comes a moment in time when each man or woman wonders keenly—maybe desperately—what it is that he’s really living for. I hope that in that moment, every woman thinks about what exactly she’s pouring into each 24-hour period of her existence…and I hope that every man realizes that every day, he’s trading 24 hours of his life for something…and I hope that this realization startles them, challenges them, changes them…frightens them.

Today I wondered about what it is that I’m trading my life for. What’s the legacy? Is it God’s vision...or I am trying to force His hand? Am I living life fully, and am I living it well?

Perhaps the key in answering that question is to zoom out, to remind ourselves what the big purpose is, so we can better understand the little part that we play.

Isaiah 45:5-7 clarified some things for me tonight:
“I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides Me, there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know Me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides Me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, Who does all these things.”

It’s comforting to be reminded of the fact that He equips us, that He doesn’t ask us to do anything that He hasn’t done Himself, that He understands every nuance of everything that we feel, that He has personally wrestled through the same struggles we fight on a daily basis…in short, that He has designed us, commissioned us, and cares more deeply about us than we will ever fully understand. He’s not just the coach who tells us how to run—He’s also the dad who meets us at the finish line with outstretched arms.

And to live in light of that knowledge ought to change the way in which I view the cycle of life. May we learn to make each day count as an accomplishment from an eternal perspective…

Snippets from the Homestead

For what seemed the first time in many ages, I had the privilege of returning to the home place this past week. In many ways, it felt momentous. Like the turning of a page, or maybe the end of a chapter…or the beginning of a new book in a series whose end I cannot foresee.

You see, my baby sister and I went to the bridal shop this past week to get dresses fitted and pick out jewelry for the upcoming wedding. Her wedding.

There was something incredibly sweet, and yet strangely heart-wrenching about seeing her stand on a pedestal in her wedding gown, glowing as she tried on different necklaces and played with her veil, dreaming all the while of the blonde blue-eyed groom who will claim her as his own in six short weeks.

I have seen many brides in my time, but none quite so special to me as this one (not many as pretty either, but I’ll admit I’m biased). She has been my playmate, my companion, and my best friend from the first moments that I can remember. She is my sister, I thought, smiling wistfully as I watched her. And yet somehow, while she is still my sister now, she is less…mine. Because she is more his, and it really cannot be both ways.

Not that she was ever mine to keep. But I liked to think to myself sometimes that we shared a special relationship, a unique bond, a rare kind of intimacy, a unity of the soul. They say that nothing can break the sister bond, and in a sense I believe that—but at the same time, I have come to realize that, like every other relationship, the sister bond will change over time, and the role of the sister is never the same from one year to the next.

There is a part of me that resents the change, if I am honest with myself. There has always been a small place in my heart that protests loudly when things begin to change from what they have always been. But there is a bigger part of me that is intensely happy—wistfully, painfully, wonderingly, sincerely happy—for my little sister. It’s sweet to see the perpetual sparkle in her eyes, the glow on her face, to hear the almost-giddy laughter which seems to spring unbidden from her soul these days. It’s amazing to realize that this is God’s way of answering the prayers of many people, prayed over the course of many years. It’s awesome to see that God has given her His best, that He has carefully prepared a man uniquely suited to minister to—and be ministered to by—my little sister.

For all of these things, I am deeply and truly grateful. And yet…it hurts to see the boxes stacked in the corner of our bedroom…to know that in six weeks, she’ll leave—for good. To know that never again will we be just two sisters walking hand-in-hand under the moonlight, wondering aloud about an unknown future. To know that when I come back to the home place from now on, her bed will be empty…that there won’t be any more of those long sister talks into the wee hours of the night.

I will miss all of those things keenly. And yet, I would not for a moment turn back the hands of time. So on her wedding day, I will stand beside her with a smile on my face and tears in my heart, like sisters do, and I will rejoice in her joy and share in her laughter and send her off with much love to begin a new life with another…and it will hurt, but it will also be good, and right, and beautiful. And I’ll always be glad it happened the way it did.

I was in the library on Thursday, before coming home for Thanksgiving break on Friday. It’s quite possible that I may have been working on an assignment for philosophy, or for any number of other classes. However that may be, I distinctly remember that I was attempting to study.

On my left was a little Kenyan dude named Vincent, who was sitting there with his perky little dreadlocks sticking out all over the place as he worked feverishly on his computer, a look of focused concentration on his face. With him was a decidedly not-Kenyan friend, a little blonde-haired blue-eyed kid named Ian who was supposed to be assiduously taking notes and learning a great deal about the mysterious world of higher mathematics from the enlightened Vincent.

We were all studying, in some sense or another (ok, ok, Ian may have been merely pretending). But occasionally, one or the other of us would lean over into the other’s cubicle and make a joke, a smart comment, or a helpful suggestion. We all had class at 3:35, however, and thus as that fateful hour drew nearer, we all began shuffling stuff into our bookbags to leave.

Ian had been making jabs at Vincent for no particular reason during this packing process, and as we were pushing back our chairs to leave, he attempted to get me to take his side by nodding in my direction and then saying to Vincent, “Dude, she hates your guts!”

I decided that perhaps Ian was in need of some instruction regarding appropriate social interaction, and thus, in order to take advantage of this teachable moment, leaned over to explain to him that there is a difference between an attack on a behavior and an attack on a person.

Vincent, however, was not in the mood for teachable moments. Slamming one fist on the desk in front of him, he bounced slightly out of his chair, black dreadlocks bobbing as he said with great conviction, “That’s right! You preach it, sistah, and I will collect the offerings after!”

Needless to say…that was the end of any serious point in the conversation. But I left feeling richer…because I am SO going to use that line somewhere in the next month. Maybe on someone I barely know to give them the impression I’m Pentecostal…