change can do you good

I come to you tonight from our newly acquired rocker. It is the rocker that Lindsay and I will spend countless hours rocking our baby boy on. I look up and I see Roy’s new shelves, his bouncer, bassinet, almost finished crib, and toys that he won’t be able to play with for at least six months. I am thankful. I’m thankful for all the people that gave selflessly to help us get to this point in so many ways.

Lindsay and I first encountered the thought that follows on the eve of Valentines Day. At some point in the evening it came to our attention that this might be our last date ever as Josh and Lindsay. Soon it will be Josh, Lindsay and Roy. It’s weird for me to not put the “and” between our names and instead a comma followed by Lindsay’s name and then the “and.” And who? And a third person. And our baby boy.

The two of us will become the three of us. Lindsay and I are spending the last moments of what has been an eight almost nine year run of just the two of us. We started dating between our sophomore and junior years of high school. We went to different schools and broke up for a little over a year. We stayed friends during that year and so I think that math goes something like this. Three and a half years of dating, one and a half years of being broken up, one year of being engaged and two almost three years of being married. We’ve made all kinds of wonderful memories. Some of them hard, some of them easy, but all of them good.

And now we are enjoying these last moments of just the two of us. And can I confess that I’m sad. Now here I must be clear. I couldn’t be more excited about baby Roy coming in a few days. He was planned and we are blessed and already cherishing and thankful for him. But this…this is a good sad. It’s like the sad I felt when I said goodbye to my house, land, and lake the week after we got married and ready to move down here. It was a crescendo moment for me. I didn’t cry saying goodbye to any of my family. I didn’t cry saying goodbye to my friends, but I did cry in the foyer of my house as I knew I was leaving for the last time. O sure I’ve been back, but it was a moment that solidified a change. A change that I had chosen and was ready to celebrate, but a change still and change is always hard. I said goodbye to more than just my house in that moment. I said goodbye to my specific orientation towards a million memories. No longer would I reach back to those moments as feeling like that was just yesterday, just a couple of years ago…no I knew that, that chapter had to be ended. That feeling hurts a little and that is how I feel tonight. I’m getting ready to say goodbye to Lindsay and me. Just Lindsay and me.

It is sometimes difficult for me to know what to do with these feelings. One of the most healing things for me at Kyle’s funeral was when Burt led us in the responsive prayer. In an incredible way, in the midst of sorrow, the prayer cultivated a deep sense of gratitude in all of us towards God for all the things that collectively beamed the brilliance of the person Kyle Lake.

And so that is how I end tonight. With a prayer in my heart that celebrates all the things that have been so perfect about these last 8-9 years and in response the chorus of a thousand memories respond to each one of these things with, “we give thanks.”