thoughts on faith family and nostalgia -"You Never Let Go"

When clouds cover the sun, and disaster comes, oh my soul oh my soul...
when waters rise and hope takes flight, oh my soul oh my soul

Oh my soul

Ever faithful ever true, you alone, you never let go

you never let go

When clouds brought rain and disaster came, oh my soul oh my soul

When waters rose, and hope had flown, oh my soul, oh my soul

oh my soul...

Ever faithful ever true, you alone, you never let go

You never lot go, you never let go you never let go

Joy and pain, sun and rain, you're the same, you never let go

These are a few of the lyrics to a David Crowder song and they do not make me think of an actual storm, although I could imagine that this song would be inspiring to people that have suffered through something like Hurricane Katrina and find hope int he Lord. For me the light music at the beginning of this song stirs something childlike in my soul, and having recently visited home with my brother Chris, his wife Krissy, my sister Maria, and her kids Jack and Kate, I am feeling sentimental. My sentimentality stems from remembering a life I've left behind in a town I barely recognize, a childhood where I was loved and mostly safe and occasionally surrounded by chaos and tragedy in the lives of those around me. When I find myself thinking about Long Island, everything in my soul feels bittersweet, and yet I always return and something inside me always stirs when I get off the ferry in Orient Point and see that sign saying, "Welcome to New York"

I was home this past weekend for a bridal shower for my friend Christine, one of three childhood friends I still have a friendship with. It was luck and chance that Chris and Maria were there as well. Our Brother Matt called on Friday night to say hi to our parents, and I felt in his voice a kind of jealous sadness, oh.... but to live down the street, but no wait that's too close...

Why do I have such love/hate with that place? I have serious bipolar issues about it. In any given week I can have two to three conversations about it with people up here. "Oh Longuyland is the worst, full of strip malls and outlet malls and regional malls and more restaurants and best buys and borders than are humanly necessary anyway you look at it, and that is not even to mention the nascar watching trailer people at the Riverhead Raceway that you can hear from our house a good 8 miles away." And the next day its, " Oh I'm going to try to get to Long Island this weekend and get together with a few friends and hang at our house and go to the beach, watch a few Met Games. I love Long Island, Just wish the ferry didn't cost so much." And you see still, I write 'our house' like I live there. And while I do still have my own bedroom which is some kind of strange tribute to my high school existence mingled with 4-5 air mattresses deflated and stacked in a corner, about 10-15 Mercy High School yearbooks under the bed, and a good 300 lbs of my father's crap scattered randomly about and covered with dust... it is hardly 'my house'.

...but maybe that is what its always like when you finally sort of grow up...love/hate ...

love for freedom and the nostalgia of the goodness of your childhood home and hatred of all the stuff you hated when you were five and twelve and fifteen, and escaping from at 18; Hatred of that high school and the shallow people in it that never cared about anything important and never saw you, and hatred NOW at least for me, of being alone and responsible for so much of my life and everything I'm doing for work that is so important and can get overwhelming....

Anyway my main thought in all of this before I got so ridiculously sidetracked by an emotional self analyzing....is that maybe everything in life is love/hate and we have to learn to just 'never let go', never give up, never stop trying and striving. And this song makes me think of Jesus on the cross not letting go, it makes me think of our changing world and existing in such a morally bankrupt time where I know at least home is always there, to escape into a vacuum of time and values adn perhaps some semblance of innocence

...and above all...when I heard this song on my radio as I pulled away to take the ferry to work yesterday morning, after a weekend at home when my sister and parents gave their independent and wayward Annie a collective $250 just to get by...I thought of my mom and dad..when my mom came into my room and gave me a kiss on the cheek at 7:15 am and said, "I'm leaving honey, be safe, I love you, give us a call" and I thought of how my dad gave me a fierce hug and kiss and tried to give me more money and told me to call when I got to the ferry ( and again when I got to my office...and again when I got home that night) and to be sure I drove careful (he is constantly all over the road by the way)

As I got into my car and this song started and I watched my father stand on the porch until he couldn't see me anymore and I know...he will never let go...and that the siblings I am close to, none of us will...no matter how far we go, Maria, Kathy, Chris and Matt...we will never let go of that, as hard as it is to get along and to see each other in the same place at the same time, and we will probably never live on Long Island again, but we will never let go, because that is who we are and that is what family does...it doesn't let go... and for me at least, a huge part of not letting go is cheesy nostalgia and rose colored glasses of 20-20 hind sight but a bigger part is my faith in Jesus, and growing up knowing no matter how good or bad things got "joy and pain, sun and rain, you're the same" I always knew that He loved me and wasn't going to let go. And I just want to be that in my life to the people I love, someone who never lets go.

My family is huge part of that to me, whether I am that for them or not, doesn't matter so much...

Maybe Longuyland and Long Island are both parts of that too...

And tomorrow I am going to say goodbye to my brother Michael who is moving to Missouri and I pray for him, that he can be better and somehow realize too... that even if you let go, you can come back and that I don't want to let go of him.