To All My Family
And All My Friends
And All My Whole Wide Well-Loved Home State,
Saying good-bye to you was more impossibly difficult than I could ever have imagined. Even reminding myself (Daily. Hourly. Minutely?) that it's not good-bye forever, it's just good-bye for now. Even knowing that I will be back in a few short weeks (And then back again several more times. Every year!). Even then, it was still impossibly difficult.
I cried. Many tears. Many more tears than I'm comfortable admitting, and in front of many more of you than I'd care to recall. But I think you understood what those tears meant. How they were marks of my mourning and how I only mourned so deeply and freely because I loved so deeply and freely. I held nothing back from you. And it's not that I'm so sad to be moving on. I'm just deeply aware of how much I love you. And how much I'll miss you. And I had to honor that.
Over the last few weeks there have been so many good-byes. You held my hands and you rubbed my back and you wrapped me up in great big bear hugs. You prayed for me and with me and you loved me and you sent me on. Thank you. That was an incredible gift. On my last night in Waco, I wanted so much to see you one more time. I wanted to gather you near me. I wanted to stand outside your window with a boombox over my head blasting my love. I wanted to hug your neck one last, long time. Only I couldn't, because my poor little heart just couldn't take it. Not another, not one single other, good-bye. Not if I was going to have the strength to drive away from you the next day.
I cried some more as I drove. But I also laughed, and I sang. I marked milestones as I crossed borders and the wheels under me hummed and crooned and reminded me that this is right, this is good. I watched the blue horizon narrow into a brilliant wedge as tall trees sprang up all around me and stretched up to heaven. And I thought it was lovely, so lovely. But I couldn't help pining for a wider slice, for the never-ending blue of my beloved Texas sky.
I admit, I thrilled to the beauty of the countryside as I sped along. Things got greener and greener the further along I went. Rain spattered my windshield and I realized just how long it had been since I'd seen those juicy drops. Rolling green hills grew into imposing mountains and my breath caught in my throat the first time I rounded a curve and saw mist rising in long grey columns over the Smoky Mountains. My fingers trembled and my heart soared as I crossed the North Carolina border while snaking through those piney woods (with Jakob Dylan singing Into the Mystic in the background). And when I crested the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Asheville and the ground fell away to one side and it was all green and blue and lake and sky and forest in a wide swath beneath me, I thought it looked like paradise.
But still, none of that can compare to you. It was wonderful, yes, and glorious, of course. But there's still no other paradise quite as wonderful and glorious as your sweet, familiar face. Your wide, open arms. Your great, big, Texas-sized love deep down in my heart, traveling all those long miles with me. Sitting right here with me today as life goes on in North Carolina. Because my life belongs in North Carolina now, but not without you. Never without you.
It occurs to me that not many people get to write a letter like this. A letter of love and joy and gratitude from one bursting heart to a whole entire Texas-sized state and to all those many, many loved ones who reside there. G. K. Chesterton wrote that the true test of happiness is gratitude. And if that's true then I am arguably the happiest girl in the world today, because I am filled up from the top of my head to the tips of my toes with so much gratitude, and with so much love for you.
I'll see you real soon. Until then I will miss you bunches and love you harder than ever and carry you around with me wherever I go.
Texas forever.
And ever and ever.
Love, Me
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