Dear Leaving,

BY SARAH SHEARER

Sarah is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied nonfiction writing and French. She loves finding stories within people and bringing them to life — when she’s not watering her basil plant or making kombucha in her kitchen.

This morning, I told my mom that airports are good for two things: running and crying. 

“And getting to your destination,” she added. (My mom is always the one who brings me back to earth.) 

I decided to give a year of my life post-grad to mission work overseas back in the spring, and now the reality of that commitment is staring me in the face. But the face staring back at it isn’t scared anymore. She isn’t scared, and she isn’t crying (very much), and she isn’t running away. She was scared yesterday, and the day before that, but she has strength for today. And that is enough. 

Standing in the Boston Logan airport with one hour until take-off, two checked bags already on their journey to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I was still very deeply stationary. My parents and I stood in a triangle, the shape of our family since I joined it 22 years ago, off beside the sparse lines at security. 

We went to great lengths to remain there. I did a dance to Frank Sinatra over the speakers as my dad asked the specifics of events when landing, my mom unclipping and reclipping the water bottle to my backpack. We stared at and through each other, ignoring the still-empty security lines. No one wanted to say anything or move anywhere. 

Leading up to the move to Paris, I spent a lot of brain space attempting to compartmentalize my feelings. My hometown and the people living in it appeared different to me, as if I loved my town separately from the people living in it. For you, maybe they are different. But, living in one house for 20 years, I have never been forced to separate the two. 

Expanding my definition of a home began a few years ago in college. It was a necessary act and one of survival. But as the months and days before this move grew to a close, I realized that maybe compartmentalizing isn’t the answer. That having deep, deep roots in one place means the people you know there are in those roots, too. I realized that perhaps the real reason I love that road that winds up and around hilly cornfields and past the corn wagon isn’t because those cornfields are just particularly lovely but that it leads to my aunt’s house in the woods. 

I am the granddaughter eating cheesy broccoli in my grandmother's kitchen. I am the niece picking cherries and throwing them into my aunt’s bucket, and the one taking a bite of lasagna from my uncle’s plate. I am a daughter stuck to my mother’s ribs. 

And sitting up here in the air, I concerned myself with anticipating my family’s sadness so much that I took it on as my own. I assumed that my decision to leave was going to affect them and thought about that more that what it was going to do to me. Empathy has its downfalls. 

I think there just might be something really beautiful in owning someone else’s pain. I think it is what a lot of us want, to be known and seen and understood and sat-beside in our suffering. And there’s a place for that. Sometimes it means being stationary, standing in a triangle in an airport because what could possibly be on the other side, and oh isn’t it scary sometimes. But sometimes I think pain begs us to move. It pleads with us to step out.

For me, as someone who follows Jesus Christ, it is imperative that I believe, really believe, that He is enough for me. And not just for me but also for my family. He is bigger than your pain, and He is closer to you than it ever could be. And when I assume that leaving is going to cause a painful absence, pain gets center stage. It gets the good lighting. Thinking more about suffering and being alone than about His constant presence, grace, and companionship gives me a low view of God’s character.

So I’m looking closely, and I’m taking notes. I can see that Matthew is right — having a high view of who God is before anything else allows me to live solely for Him because I know that He is enough.  

Leaving what you love isn’t easy. But there is a tension you learn to live with, learn to wrangle to the ground, when the only thing you could imagine doing besides staying is leaving. 

It was a soft realization, a relief of sorts, to understand that you are allowed to really, deeply love something and not be with it. The love is not erased. But leaving is unavoidable. 

You can put on some Frank Sinatra and dance around it and stare past it, but you don’t have to do that. You have freedom in Christ to run into the future with open hands! So I left that spot in the Boston airport. I did a dance in the security line that was still miraculously empty and waved at my mom and dad until I got whiplash and blew them enough kisses to last a year. Time to board.