Up until this weekend I didn't truly know or understand how sad goodbyes could be.
For as long as I can remember, and as long as I have been at my church (which has been for as long as I can remember) the same people have always been there. I live in a small town, and as a rule my church is also small. On a good Sunday we average about a hundred in attendance for the sermon.
The people who're in my church have been going for years, and all of their children (myself included) have grown up together. One word that sums up all of us when we are together is family (insanity can also be used at times, but family fits better).
This year we have had to lose part of our family, our youth leader and her family, the senior high teachers, and a family that has played a big part in the youth since they started attending.
Every year in late spring/early summer our entire youth group has what we call our 'retreat'. One weekend we go away to a nearby wildlife reserve which allows us use of their two community buildings/cabins. We enjoy fellowship, worship, and each others company while learning even more about our God. We arrive on Friday evening, have dinner and a lesson, before having free time the rest of the night. Saturday is always the busiest and the most fun before going home on Sunday.
The cardinal rule of Saturday night is that there will be tears. The entire day we have been having lessons, and games that are our own version of Survivor/The Amazing Race. Then we have entertainment provided by either the leaders or the senior high. This year, because it was our leaders last year we decided to go out with a bang. The six senior high present (myself included) got together with the man who always does our worship music and compiled a performance of "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)".
But we weren't just singing or playing music to it. Well, we were but not in the original tune. We hand rewritten it to the tunes of "Sweet Home in Alabama", "Jail House Rock", "Purple Rain", "Barbra Anne", "Great Balls of Fire" and "Friends in Low Places". To add to the comedy, we dressed up as the singer whose song we were preforming. I will never forget the sight of one of my best friends attempting to pull off Elvis Presley. Although, he did a pretty good job.
In that thirty minutes, we laughed more than we had laughed all weekend. Which was good that we got to be happy for that time, because the tears were coming.
The adults gave out gifts to each other, and the entire youth presented our leaders with a wall hanging that had a verse on the front, and on the back we had stapled a piece of paper on which was written personal messages from all of us. The tissues had to come out at this point. We all needed them.
And we continued to use them throughout the night, as we all sang and worshipped together as a group one last time. It was one of the saddest moments of my very short life. Later, while the junior high had free time, senior high said our own goodbyes to the adults and teenagers who were leaving.
These are the people we grew up with, who watched us grow. They have seen us at our best and our worst, and been there when we needed them for anything. Saying goodbye to them was hard.
I don't think I've cried so much in my entire life as I did that night. I'm crying now, writing this and remembering.
Saying goodbye was sad, but it was also slightly happy. The best of times and the worst. Because we aren't saying goodbye to our brothers and sisters forever. We'll see them again someday, in this life or the next. This isn't the end, our goodbyes to each other aren't, "Forever goodbyes" they're, "I'll see you soon goodbyes". For us, this isn't it. It's the end of the chapter, but not the book. The end of an age, but not the world. I could use so many analogies here to try to explain, but I think those are sufficient.
As we stood there on that last morning preparing to load into the vans, we all knew that we were different. That this weekend had changed us more then the others, and that after this our lives would never be the same. And truly, they won't. We had said enough goodbyes the night before, we had spoken what was in our hearts. We had cried all our tears. So that morning there were no goodbyes.
just, "We'll meet again."
