When it's all said and done,

I'm only beginning to realize how much I'm going to miss my church home here in Connecticut. Having grown up in church, I know full well that not all churches are created equal: one can spend agonizing weeks and months being greeted by too-bright smiles and welcome packets and (insincere?) incessant requests for your "information" before stumbling across a church that even remotely resembles home. I've been so blessed.

I'm so grateful for the give-and-take of my relationships here, for the diversity of our home crowd, for the way new people feel something different (it's love, and yeah, we know that's so rare to find these days). Knowing I'm leaving soon, again and possibly for good, makes me uber-grateful for nights full of ice cream sandwiches and iced coffee, hiking partners and curbside dwellers asking late-night kinds of questions, mutually honest wrangling with Ourselves in the Universe, and moments marked by laughter. I've got it good with these guys and gals. Here's to hoping for a mass exodus of these folks a wee bit north and a wee bit east, where life is good and the chowda is hot.