Denial is my bottle of pills. As I sit here watching change be thrust upon my life, proximity will decrease to the friends who have held my very heart in the palm of their hands. It feels rainy, it feels like tears are streaming down clouds cheeks as the sky watches us, unable to hold it all in. I feel like stone. I'm used to this. Right? I'm used to watching the friends and family I have spent a year with all separate and leave, I am living the life of ministry. I am living the life of a missionary. I am living the life of a soldier. I am living the life of a teacher. Destined to start over and over again, as paths intertwine and lives are knit together we may spend years upholding each other, brother and sister. Inevitably though the beautiful tapestry of our lives must create the picture it longs to express. We must part. Waiting in anticipation to when we are surrounded once again for a year by hundreds of different individuals who are so different that I can't help but smile knowing God never creates the same person twice. But I can't help but sob, and cough, and sputter. Because God never creates the same person twice.

This week I am saying goodbye to people I have known for years. Not days or months or weeks. I am saying goodbye to lives that have been lived close to mine sharing board and room and friends and families. I am saying goodbye to one of my closest friends, my very sister, who has traveled weary and long for three years faithfully by my side and yet now we must part to places unknown. Hopefully never to grow up but rather to help others become free. To dance and laugh and be who we were made to be. I am saying goodbye to a team of traveling minstrels and bunglers who have dabbled in whip cream and Harriet Tubman. Spent nights serenading the sky with violin and darkness in the abandoned manor by the lake. Some who went to WCC, made GCC, and hated acronyms with a FLP (Fiery Latin Passion). I am saying goodbye to places. Rooms that next year will be empty, haunted by the ghosts of memories our faulty minds can hardly develop. Walls that mean so much, yet next year will be home to someone who can't and will never understand the events and days and moments and laughs that were contained within that space just moments before. I am saying goodbye to Chile, the only South American country touching Hungary's borders. I am saying goodbye to Antoine Fisher. I am saying goodbye to the Tech Center where we talked in peace and serenity and looking back I see how foolish and arrogant and prideful I can be. Where I watched chick flicks and ate Ice Cream while crying because I was head over heels in love, enthralled, enchanted, with someone who can't return my affection. Where I burnt bridges from only talking about myself and built new ones through forgiveness and time. Where I filmed a guy fawkes of Craig and watched as they held me down and viciously popped his head much like the lame Enrique Iglescias video for "Hero" Where I met some of the best friends I have ever had.

The cascading evanescence of this moment saturates my heart and mind and music. In the twilight of knowing change looms upon the horizon bearing its ambivalent grin of promise and devastation I must cling to hope. Hope deferred will wed the heart with illness. This is our hope.

Soon some of us will find ourselves sipping coffee together at Starbucks and eating Mexican food while whip cream dribbles down the face of someone who obviously did not really have a birthday.

Soon we will be in dire need, hurting, weak, and needing encouragement. Only to find a best friend at the doorstep for no particular reason.

Soon we will be pastors, preachers, farmers, teachers, mothers, fathers, McDonald's employee of the month, camp counselors for life, home schoolers in the backwoods with no technical job label, living lives working with the very people who have made this time so special and worth it.

Years from now in a place of light and peace and serenity these broken friendships, old memories, these families, will all embark upon a journey to a kingdom with the Savior King.

As I write this to Secondhand Serenade (Now it's over, Fall for you, The Call... use youtube... the music is epic...) I am just kind of in a state of surreal passing. Alas life must go on, life must go on.

Sometimes I worry that my heart won't pass on. When I would drop everything in a heartbeat to be with you. Sometimes I worry that tomorrow will bring cheap imitations of yesterday that only remind me of what I had. I am more afraid now then ever that I will never feel infinite again. I will take for granted memories and laughs and hugs. I will hold different hands and feel lesser feelings.

I still have a scrunchy in my pocket... heh, I have a spiderman in my pocket. Sometimes I'm terrified I won't let it die. Sometimes I'm terrified that this is more final then it feels. More final then we understand. More final then it should be.

Yet years from now, in the dark night of the soul. When waves surround and the flood engulfs. When the echo of the sky feels as brass. When God is near yet we are unable to feel. I will be praying. Remembering. Hoping. Faithful. I will be there. A call, a letter, a nod away. And I will drop everything. I will come running.

Secondhand Serenade
It's not over

My tears run down like razorblades and no,
I'm not the one to blame: it's you or is it me?
And all the words we never say come out and now we are all ashamed.
And there's no sense
In playing games,
when you done all you can do.

But now it's over, it's over.
Why is it over? We had the chance to make it.
Now it's over,It's over. It can't be over.
I wish that I could take it back, but it's over.

I lose myself in all these fights;
I lose my sense of wrong and right.
I cry, I cry.
I'm shaking from the pain that's in my head.
I just want to crawl into my bed and throw away the life I led.
But I won't let it die. But I won't let it die.

But it's over, it's over. Why is it over?
We had the chance to make it. Now it's over,
It's over. It can't be over.
I wish that I could take it back.

I'm falling apart, I'm falling apart.
Don't say this wont last forever.
Your breaking my heart, your breaking my heart.
Don't tell me that we will never be together.
We could be over and over, we could be forever.

I'm falling apart, I'm falling apart.
Don't say this wont last forever.
Your breaking my heart, your breaking my heart.
Don't tell me that we will never be together.
We could be over and over, we could be forever.

It's not over.
It's not over, it's never over, unless you let it take you, it's not over,
It's not over, it's not over, unless you let it break you. It's not over.

Liquid seeps through my fingers

The joy of life and the friends I have

Transient yet flowing down

They never last

I squeeze tight, knuckles white

The sand sprays faster, as I fight

Can I hold on? Can I hold on?

The hourglass of time pours down

Hours and days, smiles and frowns

Caught in the evanescence of life

As the cascade rose once bright

Now flickering before a chorus of night

Can I hold on? Can I hold on?

If I let go and cup my palms

The liquid falls slower and my qualms

Answered not by victory

not by encapsulating

but by the solace of embracing

Precious

When I don’t hold on

When I don’t hold on