Welcome to this week’s edition of the Five Minute Friday blog link-up!
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This week’s FMF writing prompt is: LEAVE
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.Â
On August 9th, 2011, four days after my 30th birthday, I left my mom in a residential room at a Hospice facility in Michigan to board a plane back to Cape Town, South Africa, where I lived at the time. It was the last time I would ever see her this side of heaven. About six weeks later, she breathed her last on this side of the curtain and took her first breath of eternal life with her Lord.
Exactly twelve years later, on August 9th, 2023, I drove my daughter three-and-a-half hours away to drop her off at college for the first time. While the circumstances were far different from the scene in 2011, as I watched her walk away, I remembered the heartache I felt when I left my mom on the same day twelve years before.
I keep trying to remind myself to be grateful that I have a relationship with my daughter that makes me cry tears of sadness when she leaves and not tears of gladness. And yet, the sting is still there.
As long as we live in this broken world, until we’re with the Lord in glory, someone will always have to leave.
The beauty is this: That even here, even as we walk away and wipe tears from our eyes, we are never really alone. He will never leave us or forsake us.
STOP.
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If I may, I would like to request prayers from the Five Minute Friday community, for Barb. She was taken with severe upper abdominal pain today, and is in the ER, waiting on test results as I write this.
Today my dear wife had to leave
for hospital far up the road,
that thereby she would soon receive
an effective morphine load
that would at least quell the pain
that had her bent quite foetally,
an ache that drove here half insane
for she felt it might be lethally
taking charge of what she had,
and leading her to Pearly Gates,
which in itself would not be bad
but Barb’s the sort that really hates
to miss a film (as well she ought)
for which the tickets have been bought.
Four minutes, and please pardon my scrambled head. Wish I could be with her in the waiting.
Barb had her gallbladder removed this afternoon. It went well, and she’s waking up in the recovery room.
Thank you all for your prayers.
Oh my goodness. Andrew, I’m just now reading your request. I’m so grateful Barbara got to the ER and has received relief. I will continue to pray for her complete healing and your peace.
I’m so glad that she is doing well.
Oh, my goodness, your essay is so bittersweet. I had to watch my mom leave this world a year ago this month. She was 95 and had lived a long life and had attempted suicide 3 times in her last decade on earth. So, in many ways she was ready to go, and we knew she was on borrowed time. But my sister, brother and I were still devastated. And the first anniversary of her passing on 08.02 was a tough day.
Similarly, I just said goodbye to my oldest daughter this past week when she and her family left to return to Ft. Worth after a 5-day visit ‘home’ to El Paso. I don’t know when I will see her again…surely over the holidays…but not having a set date to look forward to made saying goodbye harder.
Like you, I am thankful for a relationship with my mom and my daughter that made their leaving so sad. Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of writing. I am joining for the first time but was pretty unsuccessful on my first try. Better luck next time.
Welcome, Leslie! So glad you’re here! And thank you for taking the time to share this glimpse into your story. I’m so sorry for both goodbyes you’ve had to say recently. May you sense the Lord’s nearness in the midst of your grief!
Sorry, I’m so late linking up. I haven’t done so before and I’m not sure why. But today’s prompt really spoke to me.
So glad you joined us, Donna! Welcome!