Return

In about 10 hours (WOW! didn't know it was that close...) I'm headed back to Rising Hope. But the landscape looks totally different than it did a year ago. For one, I have no Charles to experience it with, which is sad in a way. For two, I have a Dan (or maybe two...) to experience it with, which is happy in a good way. For three, I'm only going to be there for a week, which is happy and sad.

But oh how I've wanted to go back.

Thing is, I know things aren't going to be the same. I've always known that. But I'm the teeniest bit afraid that once I get there, some of the luster of last summer will wear off. After I express this fear to myself I tell myself that that's kind of impossible, being that I still remember the warts of my experience as well as the whimsy--but it's a fear all the same. Fear of moving on to the detriment of what's behind, I suppose. But my Lord and my God, how I have missed those people.

I'll be staying with Deborah, the most beautiful and wonderful church secretary that has ever walked the planet. I'll be visiting Lauren, who taught me so much last summer (namely how to laugh in the face of pure and total chaos.) And I get to see all the faces of all the beautiful people I shared life with.

So why am I so frightened? Because I know I've changed. I know I've continued on the path that all of these beautiful people helped lead me down but I'm not really sure if they're going to recognize that path. Phrasing it that way makes it sound like I'm worried about their approval...which I suppose I both am and not. More than anything I'm worried that I haven't lived out my experience in the best way I should. I'm afriad I haven't done justice to the stories which I was entrusted with, the stories I was instructed to tell.

Maybe that's why I feel the need to go back--to learn more of the story, and to learn to tell it better from the people who live it and tell it best.

Maybe...just maybe...I've left a bookmark at RH, and I'm finally returning to it to read on. Whether that's the case or not, I think that's how I'm going to look at it. Who's afraid of finishing a story, after all? Especially when it's a story as compelling and full of robust, dirt-under-the-fingernails, wonderful love as this one?