The Love of the Lord Endures

In all that I have found

Your evidence abounds

I've always sensed your fingerprints

If I just look around

And yet this grand display

Will all soon pass away

So I hold on to mighty truth

That your love is here to stay.

The love of the Lord endures.

The love of the Lord endures.

If there's one thing I can be sure

It's that the love of the Lord endures.

Life has let me down

In wealth joy can't be found

I've looked for peace in all of these

But I have always found

That the love of the Lord endures.

The love of the Lord endures.

If there's one thing I can be sure

It's that the love of the Lord endures.

When I stumble, when I fall

When I'm walking ten feet tall

Your love is there day after day

Even at the worst extreme

Or after I have been redeemed

Your love is there

And it won't let me go

The love of the Lord endures.

The love of the Lord endures.

If there's one thing I can be sure

It's that the love of the Lord endures.

-Joy Williams

I think I listened to that song about 15 times this morning driving to school. This is a big week of saying goodbye and transitioning, and holy cow I didn't think it would be this hard. It's even harder when everyone else is sad. It would be easier if the kids didn't act sad or if the new friends I made weren't so great, or if I wasn't loving every second with my friends down here. For the past four and a half years this has been it, and now that I have to move on and leave my first job and this place that has been home I can't imagine it.

I wish there was an easier way or something to do to make it all better and to make the pain of leaving and the pain of starting totally over go away, but there is no cure. Last week a bunch of us watched a movie at night, and there in the darkness as we were talking the only thing I could think to say was that I was scared. And Megan simply replied, "I know. I am too." I shouldn't be scared, and I don't mean scared of what's going to happen next. I trust that what happens next will be great. I am scared to say goodbye and I am scared to realize that a part of my life is over; it is really the only way I know how to describe it. And maybe sad. And I know someday I will tell my kids about my first teaching job at a little country school built in 1910 when my students went to tractor pulls on the weekends and when my closest friends and I decorated for Christmas too early and drank too much coffee while trying to keep up with life after college and it will be a great distant memory. I am just not ready for it to be a memory yet.

I wish that I didn't have to let go. I wish with everything that I didn't have to say goodbye and it does hurt. That is why this week as I prepare myself for goodbyes to these students, the people I work with, and goodbye (for a time, at least) to Huntington, a place filled with some of my most prized memories and where my life seems to be now, I need to know that through it God's love does endure no matter what.