Greg, Beth, Cordell and baby:
You shake the dust from your shoes and move to a new phase of life, but you cannot shake our affections for you. We applaud your bravery; the courage it takes to turn down an unknown road with children in tow, and hope. You hope for inspiration, for knowledge, for health, and for discount prices on baby clothes. We hope for you to be healthy, content, to feel affirmed in your vocation, and for the U-Haul truck to finally arrive.
Your friendship has encouraged us in a place where we were unsure we would find sympathetic hearts. We were surprised and have been delighted to recognize in you shared passions for books, for theological discussion, for delicious food, for bargain prices, and for family and friends. When Derek and I first met, he was surprised that I knew the rhyme "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream", since we'd grown up 2,000 miles apart. Somehow, realizing that we had a silly little rhyme in common made us feel like partners right from the start - a mutual empathy. We feel that with you.
We are sad to see you go, but tell ourselves it's only for a time so that the tears don't overtake us. My dream is to live on a circular plot of land with all my friends and their children, with our individual houses on the edge furthest from the center and in the middle will be a park where, whether the sky rains or scorches, we and our children will eat and play and pray together. We will go home at night and be with our children and as we put ourselves to bed, we know that we are not alone as parents, or as children, but are part of a greater circle. People who are excited to share a recipe, who are enthusiastic about our children's achievements, who are praying for us when we're feeling crappy, who will share their books and insights, who will come and look for us if we don't show up for a gathering, who will take their turn to clean up the dishes, who won't judge us when we answer the door in our pajamas at 2 in the afternoon, and who love to hear our stories,and feed us when we're too tired to make a peanut butter sandwich.
For a short while, we got to be part of the same circle. It was my pleasure to haul boxes up from the basement, and be "taken for a walk" to induce my labor with baby #2, and to dump sand out of our boy's underwear after an evening spent visiting in the shade eating BBQ. If you stayed, we would have many more days to learn about you, to meet your new baby, to get so deep into conversation that we lose track of the time, to learn (ahem) how to glue handles back onto coffee mugs, and to drag our children on long walks so that they sleep and sleep and sleep while we finish off the bottle of wine (we didn't do that one yet, did we?). But you must go, and though we grieve, we understand.
We celebrate the time we had with you, and look forward to a day when we can share life with you again - whenever that may be.
Dear friends, you, your lives, and the life we had together, will be missed.
