we can’t go back

“I learnt something when I went back to Helston—expecting it to be the paradise I knew as a child. That, try as we might—happy as we were—we can’t go back.”
- Margaret Hale, North and South

Leaving the East Coast three weeks ago was hard. I think I’m only now beginning to feel the actual impact, to let myself think about where I am and what I left behind.

The long, empty days of loneliness that I dreaded before I came home are real now. They are my life. The awful sense of hanging in limbo, not knowing which direction to move, or if even to move at all—the strange sort of letdown that happens when suddenly you are removed from the kind of environment that made you believe you had a role in furthering the Kingdom of God. I call it 1 Kings 19 syndrome.

It’s time to rest. It’s time to wait patiently for the redirection of the Lord. It’s time to mourn what has ended so I can look toward what is beginning. Part of me wants to go back—back for a day to my dorm in Florida, or to my cabin in Pennsylvania—but I know that it wouldn’t be the same, and it’s time to accept the memories for what they are. Memories. Fleeting moments and sensations from a time that is not now, a time that I knew would pass too quickly and did my best to love while I was immersed in it.

I can’t go back, but I can look back. I can smile when I think of Colin bickering across the hall with Hannah, or Clinton drinking Coke for breakfast, or Ethan yelling “Hello, British!” every morning before class. I can marvel at the gift of one year that I was given with each of those people. I love them all so much, and I miss them.

And that’s okay.