Do you have sounds you wish you can replay over and over when they’re gone? I wish I could capture the laughter of my friends that filled this house. I wish I can capture the sounds of my nephew’s loud bike riding around the house or the moment it crashes into the furniture or even his cries for help to get him unstuck. I wish I can capture the off-tune songs my mom bursts into. Sure, there are videos and voice recordings. But how do I fill an empty house with a memory when I wish to snap my fingers and bring those moments back right then and there? What do you do when you’ve had a long day and all you crave are your sisters’ presence or your dad’s shoulders? What is this empty nest with no one to come home to and receive you?
What to do as time passes you get progressively more alone? The travel plans elongate. The time away to spend with other family members increase. Silly me to think I knew what I wanted when I thought I wanted to move out. Silly me to ever contemplate leaving the nest. Silly me to think life would be better if I moved out.
But now it’s hardly me who leaves. It’s me who comes home to a very quiet house. Maybe one day I’ll have a family and maybe one day it will be so overstimulating with my kids yelling at each other. And maybe that day will I wish I could have all this quiet back. Maybe then will I say I don’t know how good I had it. Isn’t that the hard part of life? We’re always craving for thing we don’t have, and suddenly when we do have it we wish for things to go back because it gets to be “too much” or “overwhelming”. And all you can say is “I had no idea what I was talking about back then.”
But Amy, you are never alone with God. Sure, we can say that. But isn’t it harder when all you want is a hug and question how God can even come down and actually give you one? Thank God for the moments I can come home and say “Boy, am I glad to be home.” I pray every moment I have, after a long and heavy day out, that I can feel His tangible presence embracing me. May God fill this empty cup till one day it overflows.
How deep the anguish and how wonderful the joys of Paul to proclaim he found the secret of being content in every season. How silly of us to think the secret is a formula, a certain relationship, or even a place. All along the secret is Jesus. Riches meant nothing for David to have a deep yearning to have more time in the courts of God than elsewhere.
“I can gain the whole world, but if I don’t have love [God], I have nothing.”