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It's only been four years in coming! Tom and I finally watched the last season of The Middle. That sitcom, which ran for nine years, drew to a close the same year we sold the Abiso house and saw our youngest get married. I always loved that show. For a comedy, exaggerated as it was for laughs, it always hit a little too close to home for comfort. Then again, comedies tend to do that don't they? They have to be relatable in some way... that's what makes them funny after all.
In many ways the Hecks could have mirrored our family... average, hard-working, middle class people dealing with the normal stresses and strains of everything from financial setbacks (saving bucks by shopping at "The Frugal Hoosier") to keeping up with their kids' school activities and a boatload of teenage drama. Each week we'd tune in for a good laugh and a healthy dose of shared eye glances, which pretty much said it all. Yep, we totally got it.
Tom gave me the complete nine seasons one year for Christmas, and we worked our way through all of them, except the ninth. I don't know why we stopped there. I guess life just got busy or we forgot about it. Who knows. The important thing is that we discovered them again and decided this year on my birthday we were gonna finish the series once and for all. That was a stellar idea... until it wasn't. One thing you need to know about me is that I'm a crier. I cry at all kinds of things. Good books. Beautiful music. Sermon illustrations. Romantic movies. And sitcoms. Yeah. If something strikes a chord with me, it's all over. Pull out the tissues.
I'd have to say I was doing quite well until the very last, last episode. Axle, the oldest son decided to take a job in Colorado, fifteen hundred miles away. When Frankie (Axle's mom) started to fall apart, I was right there with her. She gave a heartfelt speech about it being the end of an era, and how the family had to stick together, no matter what. Nevermind this was no longer my life season. Nevermind that Tom and I had already navigated those tough goodbyes and were well past all that... or so I thought. I sat there like a blubbering idiot totally identifying with her pain while revisiting some of my own.
The really interesting thing is that I had a conversation just last weekend with a gal who was feeling that same angst over her son, her only, going away this past fall to college. She and I had only ever met once before through a mutual friend, but we were seated together at this gathering and the conversation made its way round to the hard reality of kids growing up and leaving home. Suddenly we clicked. We were connected by heartstrings invisible to everyone but us.
She talked. I listened. Her voice broke. I nodded knowingly. She uttered the exact same words in her conversation with me that I had spoken to my son's youth director when he asked how I was doing days after we dropped my boy off in Austin. "Things are never going to be the same." I understood her pain. I felt her longing for that lovely time that had now passed. I got it.
I also got why God lets us go through tunnels.
We go through tunnels so we can be the light at the end for the next one to come that way.
I was able to share how I had felt the exact same way... crying at the drop of a hat... over socks found at the bottom of the laundry basket. I knew she was right. Things WOULD be different from now on, but I also knew what yet she didn't... that things would get better. Though she might not feel it right now, she too would navigate the steps necessary to move forward from the goodbyes to the reunions to come. That light put a smile on her face, and we laughed together about feeling like we were the only ones to fall apart that way. God is good.
Tunnels have a purpose... so do lights at the end. Tunnels provide opportunities to relate to one another's burdens and to help lighten the load.
Empathy is a quite interesting emotion. It gives us the capacity to delve into another's heart and either rejoice with it or weep with it. Empathy makes us human. I think it also makes us more Christ-like. That same emotion that had me bawling with the imaginary Frankie Heck is the thing that makes it easier for me to reach out to someone who has suffered a difficulty of some kind. I can relate in a more profound way if I too have traveled through that tunnel. This is especially true for me with women who have lost their mothers, particularly if it's with someone who happened to be very close with her mom, as I was with mine.
We've all been there, each of us traveling through the dark at one time or another. Tunnels are scary and sometimes long. We never travel through them alone, not when we have Jesus. But Jesus uses us and our own experiences too, to witness that He is faithful in bringing us through safely to the other side. Our light, our warmth, our understanding, and our hugs are beautiful proof to another of that very thing.
Tunnels have a purpose;
... so do lights at the end.
"Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ." - Galations 6:2
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