There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens… Ecclesiastes 3:1
Have you ever gone through a season where it seemed all you were doing was saying goodbye?
That’s the season I’ve been in.
Today, we’ll be saying our final goodbye to my treasured grandfather. He recently went home to be with Jesus (and my grandmother). His season on earth was through. He lived a full life, and now, it’s time to say goodbye.
This goodbye happened to come at the same time I’m wrestling through saying goodbye to some personal goals and dreams. A life season is shifting again, and, as often happens when the winds of change begin to blow, goodbyes become necessary.
This all came on the heels of saying goodbye to a family pet, which followed closely behind saying goodbye to a long chapter of life with a solid thud of the door. It was a necessary and right goodbye, but an ending, nevertheless.
Some goodbyes are a breath of fresh air, while others painfully steal the breath right out of the lungs leaving us gasping for a happy hello.
Some goodbyes do offer just that– a new beginning and a chance to say hello to something that never would have appeared had the goodbye not happened. I’m sure you have heard the cliche often offered as a bandaid to our bleeding hearts: “God doesn’t close a door without opening another one,” or some such platitude. But I don’t completely agree. Occasionally, a goodbye is a gateway to the next door, but sometimes, it is just that–a goodbye– a door, a chapter, a season, closing firmly behind us.
And it hurts.
More often than not, when goodbyes are said– to jobs, relationships, pets, and dreams–the next door is not just standing there open in greeting waiting for us to happily walk through.
No, often we have to pass through the season of “the in-between.”
My husband likens this to being poured out from one cup to the next and says the time in between often feels like a free fall. The One in charge of pouring us from one thing to the next knows exactly where we will land, but as the one falling– it can be hard to discern what that next container will be like. It’s unsettling. But it’s in this free fall between goodbye and hello where we learn to trust that God is in control. There is often a significant purpose for the time in-between, and if we can let go and trust the pourer, our landing will come at exactly the right time.
Much of life is spent in this time in-between, and in fact, our whole life is the time in-between. Life is essentially made up of all the goodbyes and hellos in-between birth and death.
Our lives are lived between the hello of new life and the goodbye of last breath where we will each walk through the final door… will it be pearly and bright, or darker than night?
If you have said goodbye to a life lived for your own pursuits and said hello to The Door of Life, your final hello will be one of joy–if not, the last goodbye will endure for eternity. The choice is yours.
In the meantime, when you find yourself in a season of goodbyes, take the time to grieve the painful ones, then embrace the flow of the in-between, and rest with hope knowing the next door and happy hello will be revealed in good time.
There is, after all, a season for everything under the sun.