She left a few nights ago. The past six weeks with Maddison have been wonderful.
The goodbye at the airport was terrible, though nothing like when I left her so many months ago. I convinced her that it won't be so bad if I come home for Christmas, all the while sucking back the tears myself. Who can find a woman like this, willing to stay with me after I left, never knowing when we would be together again? That would walk blindly off a precipice hoping that God would be faithful catch her.
God, through some generous supporters, did of course catch her and I both, some 6 or 7 months after I first left. When she was here it was like a day hadn’t past away from her, nothing between us had changed, and here for the first time I was able to try out just how exactly her and I work together in this kind of setting.
I don’t like to admit to learning anything from people less than 30 years my senior with anything less than multiple degrees in higher learning, but I find myself, half grumbling and half giddy, to admit just how much I've learned from her and how much potential there is for more in the future. Learning from a bubbly newly minted 20 something girl is something I can’t underestimated, or underappreciate. Where did she come from? It’s the sort of thing that makes me suspicious God has been interfering (thanks!)
We are full of plans for the future, dreams would probably be better. Ambitious notions that wouldn't be possible by one without the other. I Only wish I could act and feel in such a way deserving of this sort of attention. I've learned that in ministries such as this, where life lessons and prospects are extracted like soil is tilled, that all life’s rocks are forced to the surface begging for a toe to stub. For me they are more accurately a few boulders, and their impact more akin to life crippling. This is where I pray God (and Maddison) will deal graciously and gently with me, as I attempt shove off these limitations, or perhaps more realistically, become accustomed to their continual impeding.
It’s interesting, as gushingly romantic as it sounds, I love her more, and I’m closer to her with each goodbye. In such a way that I don’t know if I would be capable of this sort of depth of affinity to someone otherwise through any means available to me in the past. This is better, its different, closer, more legitimately God focused (however you take that), and it’s getting stronger all the time.
In the hours following Maddison’s takeoff I struggled with the temptation to follow her on the next flight, or book my next flight one way. While the latter is not out of the question, the next day, which I spent in the hospital I was reminded of how pure and meaningful this work can be, even in the mundane activities, and remembered that it was Maddison who helped turn my attention to this. She wants me to stay, as long as God would have me, because as I grow so does she, until we are reunited in His timing.
