Turn the page

I heard a song the other day that led me to thinking about the change a' comin' two weeks from today when all our belongings, animals, stuff and such pack up and go north.

Bob Seger, that underrated Midwest rocker, wrote this:
Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
here I go
Playin' star again
There I go
Turn the Page

A few years back, Chipper Jones, perhaps the last great Atlanta Brave from the golden era of all those division championships and Hall of Fame pitching (for which I had to turn the page, as well) retired. He announced it early, and the entire season it seemed was a long, long going away party with gifts and such as he visited things for the last time.

Mary and I have been doing that for a month, mostly at restaurants (I have my last char-broiled oysters on the agenda for the weekend). But we've also seen Emma, our 6-year-old grand daughter do karate for the last time; and Gabe and Gavin play baseball perhaps for the last time. And on and on.

Author Beryl Markham in West with the Night wrote, " I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryear's are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance."

I grieved when we moved from Meridian, Miss.'s Oakland Heights neighborhood and my 8-year-old buds Ricky and Tommy. I grieved when I lay in bed in our home in the country outside of Meridian as a high school kid thinking about losing my best friends forever when I graduated. I grieved when I moved from Meridian to Columbus, Miss. to become sports editor there, and when I moved from there to Jackson, Miss., and from there to New Orleans and from there....

Oh, you get the idea. Seems I'm always looking in the rear view instead of the windshield.

Turn the page.

Katerina Klemer says, "Moving on is easy. It's staying moved on that's trickier."

Sometimes we simply have to pick it all up and move on, turn the page, keep going. Looking back in the Bible is somewhat famous for turning you into a pillar of salt.

In fact, scripture has quite a bit to say about the future. The Bible says, "Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off." And, "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."

Turn the page.

The Apostle Paul said, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us."

But only if we turn the page.

Sunday is Father's Day. It will be, I'm afraid, particularly emotional for me. For one, I'm doing the children's sermon and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about Father's Day with a group that includes our two grand sons whose father was killed eight years ago. But it's also about saying goodbye in a million ways to our daughters, with whom we've worshipped for a year. The last Father's Day together, one would imagine, for a while. I love them with literally all my heart and will miss the time we've spent together this past year.

But it is now about the time to turn the page.

Never easy. Always important.

Page turning....and turning...and turning....