by Kerrah Fabacher
On Sunday I sat in my church building for the final time. Though they’ve been meeting in this old place for the past seven years, it was newer for me. I’ve only been attending since the fall, but as soon as I walked in the first time, I placed a hand on my heart and felt awe rise up in me. It’s this old New Orleans church with tall stained glass windows, wooden pews, and dark wooden beams criss-crossing on the ceiling. There is natural light everywhere. I don’t even know if artificial lights are on. There are no screens. Just simple and beautiful. I don’t have words to describe what it feels like in my soul, in my body, to be in that room. But I quickly learned they were just renting the space. It was only meant to be a temporary home, so I knew the ending would come.
They’d already purchased their forever home when I came onto the scene, and now it’s time to move into the new building. Sunday was officially the last time I’ll ever walk into that room.
A room that has been more healing than I could’ve ever imagined. Than I’ve even processed. A room that opened doors for new relationships in my life. A room that welcomed me when I wasn’t sure it would.
I sat and placed my hand on my heart on Sunday and breathed it all in.
It was my ending, my goodbye. But it was everyone else’s, too. Everyone was walking out of that room for the final time. There’s something about a collective ending. I don’t know. It just feels like you’re not alone.
Over the last few years, I’ve learned how endings and beginnings are happening all the time in our lives. The sun rises, and the sun sets. Winter ends and spring flowers bloom. December 31st comes, and then comes January 1st. Endings are naturally in our calendars. Sometimes we all experience them together, and sometimes we experience them alone. There are other endings, too, not just dates on calendars. There was a day I changed my last diaper for my girls. A day they weren’t toddlers anymore. A day where I went to my final Moms with Muffins and the last Kindergarten graduation. Endings are all around us.
If I know or suspect an ending is coming, I hold that. I reflect and feel the feelings that rise up. The last time I go to a place I’ve loved for so long. The last time I see a person that meant a lot to me. The last conversation. The last hug. The flatline on the monitor. There’s a choking feeling that’s in my chest in these last moments. Endings aren’t always welcomed or easy. Sometimes they’re celebratory. Sometimes they pass like the sunset and sunrise, and we give them no thought. But one thing that’s true— they often change something in us. It might be tiny, incremental. Or it might be monumental. We change with every transition, every ending.
The thing about an ending is that a beginning always follows. A beginning of a new day, a new season, a new life. A new reality. A new experience. Those beginnings aren’t always welcomed either. Sometimes we dread them, and sometimes we’re excited, ready for them.
But they will come.
As sure as the coming of the dawn each morning.
In these transitions, these endings and beginnings, it’s important for us to know how to move through them. We can’t let them keep passing by because it’s possible we’re ignoring moments to feel and process our grief or we’re not acknowledging the new hope of the beginning in front of us.
Sure, we need to maintain holistic self-care in our transitions as much as we can. Eating well and sleeping as much as we need. Moving our bodies and getting in the sun and spending time with life-giving people doing life-giving things. Self-care is of paramount importance in times of transition so the ending doesn’t sweep us under and increase depression and anxiety or other difficulties.
But we tend not only to our bodies and spaces and relationships in transitions, but also our minds, our souls. We notice how we feel and why that might be. We pay attention to how this ending is impacting us, what we’re learning, how we’re changing. We reflect on what we’ll miss that’s ending and what we won’t. What we want to leave behind and what we want to bring with us into the next thing. We reflect on what we learned. Who we were then, and who want to be now. We reflect on what is lost, and we mourn that loss.
And we do it as often as we need. Because some endings aren’t just a one-time occurrence. There a million little moments that end. And they require us to keep grieving that ending for a long time.
But as we reflect and grieve what is behind us, we make space to look ahead. To look around us in our here and now and see the goodness (and maybe what doesn’t feel so good, too). We look ahead at what could be. We consider what we’re hopeful about, what changes feel new and exciting. What we’re looking forward to, what we want and need. What God could still do.
Because no ending is an ending for those of us in Christ. Even death.
Though endings can feel like and often are little deaths (or maybe great big giant deaths), there is new life on the other side. This is not only our eternal hope, but it’s our hope for today, for tomorrow and the next day after that.
We mourn what has ended, and we hope for what is to come.
“There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:
A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.”
– Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, The Message
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