A couple of days ago, a bunch of spontaneous college boys and a couple of their naïve female friends packed into four cars and drove to Devil’s Marble Yard to engage in the age-old pastime of mountain climbing, a somewhat mind-numbing sport that pits man against the unforgiving incline of an apparently never-ending upward slope of earth and rock.

It was a Thursday afternoon of finals week, and I wasn’t sure that I could afford the time—but I reminded myself of the fact that time is a gift which we must invest in memory-making as well as studying, and then came to the conclusion that I couldn’t afford NOT to invest the time wandering around the mountain with this lively group of young people, because who knew when or if the next opportunity would come?

To be honest, this past Thursday, I needed the mountains. There are periods in our lives when we need to climb—to feel our strength draining away into the remorseless stones of a stolid and silent mass of rocky barrenness… to grit our teeth and work until physically we have nothing left to give, and we’re forced to stop and wipe the sweat out of our eyes and listen to the silence and the eerie moaning of the wind, and let the vastness of our surroundings sink in deep and permeate to the very depths of our being…

As I stood alone on the side of the mountain, surrounded by boulders the size of young elephants, there was no one within sight or earshot, and I was reminded of something that Elizabeth Elliot wrote in her book, Passion and Purity. She explained that “waiting silently is the hardest thing of all…the things that we feel most deeply, we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.” She’s right…but sometimes holding everything inside requires so much effort that the thoughts you attempt to hold back threaten to strangle you the minute your guard is relaxed even the slightest shade.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been wrestling—almost subconsciously—with an ever-increasing sense of loss. I realized it that day on the mountain…and again today, when it finally got the best of me, and I spent a few bittersweet moments sobbing over a philosophy assignment at my desk.

Why? Because I’m going home in a week. Going home because my little sister’s getting married. And I’m gonna miss her. A lot. Maybe even more than a lot.

All semester, ever since last summer, I’ve been running from the fact that this change was going to become a permanent reality…that eventually, she was going to leave—for good—and start a new life somewhere else. Subconsciously, maybe I thought that if I just kept busy with school, with ministry opportunities, with whatever or whoever would keep me from having time to think, the change would never become permanent. But now that break is less than one week away, the illusion of permanence and stability and changelessness is crumbling rapidly.

I know that when I go home, on some level, it’ll be to say goodbye to her…I know that after this, we won’t see each other nearly as much, won’t talk as often or as long, won’t be close in the same ways that we were…and I know that that’s ok—good, even…probably great, beautiful, and wonderful. But as with most major transitions in life (at least, the ones that I can remember), there’s a keen sense of loss, a dull aching emptiness that you feel in the moment…until it subsides with time, or until something else takes its place.

There will be something that will come to fill the void. I know that, because there always is. It’s the nature of our God to take us, and comfort us, and show us a new aspect of His character and His compassionate heart for mankind in the moments when we are most vulnerable and most needy and most alone... and then He gives us a new task, fills our lives with different people to pour into, and transplants us to give us more room to grow.

He will do all of those things in the next few years, both for Michelle, and for me. There’s a part of me that wishes I could know what that process will look like, but I’ve come to understand that often it’s the process of waiting without knowing that prepares us to better appreciate the gifts that God gives to us in His own perfect timing.

And so I wait. And I promise myself that I will learn to love the waiting, and the uncertainty, and even the pain…because I know that I know, in the deepest, most private corner of my heart, that our God is one who makes all things beautiful in His time…