“She’s gone.”
As Caleb and I waited for our next meeting at Adventures in Missions on Wednesday afternoon, my mother texted me that my great aunt had passed away after a few catatonic days in the nursing home. She’s been there for years, slowly deteriorating from Alzheimer’s and Dementia, slowly becoming less and less like the Nana I grew up with.
With little time to process, I bottled as I conversed with wonderful people and went into different meetings and trainings for orientation. How can I focus on building a presentation with this at the forefront ? How can I learn a language I’ll never use when I’m trying to process what has happened and is happening ?
I never question my call and never hesitate to follow – it’s easy to say yes to God, even when the way there isn’t clear. But this puts into harsh perspective the difficulty of the choices we make. This is the reality of Caleb’s and my decision to follow where God is leading us in Costa Rica.
Right now, we’re in Georgia for the week, headed to North Carolina for a month afterward. We live off of the English classes I am able to teach every morning and night and the generosity of others who open their homes and love us with meals – how can we even consider going to the funeral of my great aunt, knowing our resources are already scarce and our time is committed to preparation for the field ?
How many birthdays will we miss ? How many funerals ? How many goodbyes am I forfeiting to follow this call ?
How do we reconcile being obedient and sacrificing so much ?
And so here I sit, trying to grieve but not feeling like I have the time or the space to do so because of the responsibility and the meetings and the schedules. I even curse as my brain rattles off more and the tears won’t stop – because I need to sleep in order to function, I don’t even feel like I have the time to keep crying. Then there comes the added layer of not being there for the rest of my family as they grieve – do they feel like I’ve abandoned them in a time of need ?
How do you grieve well in the midst of busyness ? How do you mourn and acknowledge loss and still keep moving ? Do you stop ? Do you separate emotions from responsibility and take spare moments of solitude to let it all out ? Do you ignore the emotions and wait for them to haunt you back into breakdown ?
There is no lesson this time, no answer. There is no glorious, life bringing revelation, merely a frank realization of what I’m giving up to say yes to Jesus and yes to his will for my family’s life.
So I leave you today, minutes to midnight. Too exhausted to keep writing, eyes too sore to stay open. Thanks to all you who intercede for my family and me, we need you now more than ever.
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