Goodbyes and Growing Ups

Last week my family made the expected but hard drive to Alabama for my grandmother’s funeral. As was appropriate, it wasn’t a normal drive. Traffic was bad, we arrived very late and well, the journey was just a slog.

“Honey,” as we called her, was my last living grandparent. Losing her wasn’t just about saying goodbye to someone I loved and had spent summers with – it was facing the reality that a chapter of my life had closed and that a new generation was taking its place.

Grief, I’ve learned, isn’t just about the people we lose. It’s about the larger transitions we face, the thresholds we cross, and the selves we leave behind as we are forced into seasons of spiritual growth and new orientation.

C.S. Lewis, after losing his wife, wrote, “The past is frozen and no longer flows, and the present is all lit up with eternal rays.” Grief, whether for a person, a season, or a familiar rhythm, forces us to let go of what was and stand in the coy and fragile light of what is emerging. Yes, growing up often feels like this – a series of events where we let go, face the unknown, and trust that grace will meet us there.

In his book, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, James Hollis challenges us to ask: What is life asking of me now? Often, we resist this question because it demands the surrender of what is comfortable. Yet, like Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I thought like a child… but when I became an adult, I put away childish things,” we are always invited to cross sacred and holy thresholds that demand courage and vulnerability. Growing up in faith (and life) means trusting that even when the way to what we are becoming is unclear, we are never alone.

In his book, The Space Between Us, John O’Donohue reminds, “A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.” Crossing these frontiers – like mini-deaths – awakens a complexity of emotions – confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope – all signaling that we are on the cusp of something not yet known but very much alive.

So today, I wonder: What threshold are you standing at? What comfort are you being invited to release? What goodbye or hello might open a door for you to hear the summons of God to inhabit the next season into which you are growing? After all, growing up isn’t a destination; it’s a series of thresholds, each one asking us to step forward with open ears, open hands, and open hearts. And the promise? That even in the grieving, yes, even in the growing, God’s grace is already there. Amen.