Last week was not quiet. There was a swirl of activity as family friends came to transition their son to college life, and Mary Hannah returned home from her season at the park, and a flurry of meetings were held in preparation for our return to CC, and shopping trips were made to ensure that the college kids all had what they needed.
Last night, my house was still.
Almost achingly so, if I’m honest.
The friends are gone. Their boy has been installed in his dorm, and his dad has flown home, making that painful first goodbye that opens the door to so many more.
The meetings are over. We begin coming together again as a community this week, picking up the thread that was dropped so hastily this spring as covid jerked the rug from under everyone’s collective feet.
And my own college students are back on campus, comfortable in their own familiar space, fitting themselves back into the fabric of life they left so abruptly back in March.
I knew it would be quiet when the dust settled. I knew the stillness would feel both welcome and too large at the same time. I was right.
Life will fill in the nooks and crannies. It won’t stay quiet for long. Before I know it, there will be music lessons and orchestra auditions and helping five children with weekly presentations instead of three. There will be morning Scripture to send to my college kids, and letters to keep penning to my Airman. There will be library trips. There will be meal planning and a husband to get out the door for ministry obligations and friends who will need encouragement as the new wears off this just-started school year.
The quiet will recede.
The noise will return.
I’m enjoying the brief respite, and also feeling comfort in knowing it won’t last.
Thank you, Lord, for the noise. Because some day, this house will be still every night, every morning. Some day it will be me and my husband and Phineas, three adults inhabiting this place and forgetting what it was to have sons wrestling on the floor and the door slamming as kids run in from the fields. Some day I will sit uninterrupted in my knitting and be wistful over what it was to grab ten minutes with my needles before collecting kids to go to another class or lesson or gathering. It will be good when it comes, because it will be the season which you have appointed as such. I will embrace it.
But for now, I’m embracing this. The noisy season, which comes with lulls that remind me to appreciate the fullness of what I have here, now, today.