Having recently written about my plan to train as a chaplain, there has been a stream of encouragement. I have read each comment, and savored every name as if they are nourishment. It seems probable that there might be hours in the darkness next February when I will second guess this crazy decision. Staying home on a frigid evening will make more sense than heading to a hospital packed with suffering. For that reason, I am storing up those messages, like a root cellar of potatoes and carrots. 

 

This week, a woman said something that moved me. 

 

"If I were dying, I would want you there."

 

Just writing it makes me tear up. The truth is that I was with her grandmother, in the days and hours before she took her last breath. 

 

What a sacred space, to hold the hand of someone who is going where we cannot yet follow. I recall the times I waited at the gate while my oldest daughter stepped through the gaping door leading to an airplane that would carry her out of reach. I cried then. I cry now, more because rules are such that we cannot go past those confounded security gates, and still more because it is usually John who drives my twins to JFK. 

 

Being separate is an illusion, but a convincing one. We ache in our bones to be connected to the people we love, and to God. What is astonishing, is that God wants to be close to us as well. 

 

"And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28