Coming Home

 “It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

   

    You may have noticed a couple weeks back I mentioned I’d gone away for a week. Well, I did—I went on a trip to the redwoods with fourteen other students and a few faculty members from my school. One week in the misty mountains reading and journaling our way through the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Nothing but the cold woodland air, a good book, good friends, English breakfasts, warm tea, chats around log fires late into the night. And it was one of the most phenomenal experiences I’ve ever participated in. But as incredible as that was, I’m not here to talk about it. Instead I want to talk about What Happens After. 

    There are so many hard partings in this life, the greatest of which is death. For Christians, death is not truly the end, but another path, one that we must all take. It’s not the end, it’s the beginning. But for those left behind when others go, remembering that provides only a small bit of comfort. Such is the way with all partings, really—earthly and heavenly. 

    Yet—how do you say farewell to something that you love? How can you put all that behind you, pick up the threads of an old life and move on when you’ve changed so much? Farewells are everywhere, and as we deal with the consequences of saying goodbye, we look to the stories and tales and memories that have changed us, that have given us hope. 

    Sam and Frodo went on the ultimate adventure, wandering the forests of Emyn Muil and climbing to the peak of Orodruín beneath Sauron’s very eye to cast the Ring into the fire. Yet it was not their own strength that sustained them, it was their friendship and their belief in something greater that kept them going. They feasted with kings and told stories by the firelight under the stars when it was all over—and it was never just Sam, or just Frodo, it was Sam and Frodo. 

They’d been through too much together for it to be anything else. When they returned home they fought off the remnants of evil that had chased them home to the Shire—and Frodo was war-weary, heartsick, and he wanted to go home. Yet his home was changed. The Shire had been saved for Sam, but it hadn’t been for Frodo. So he left. He left to heal, and he left to find peace. Sam was home. He wasn’t. 

    And so Sam and Frodo became just Sam again, and he endured. But that farewell was the most bittersweet he had yet endured, for it is the friendships that bear so much that are the strongest. Bonds that strong can never be broken. The entire Fellowship—it might have been ended, but it was not broken. And so they remembered, when they were alone, what they had endured—and though the end had come the beginning was just around the corner. 

    So how do you say goodbye? We have but once choice—to keep going, despite the sadness. At the end of our trip, our fellowship too had formed a bond, one too strong to be broken. And when the end came, we bade farewell regretfully, sadly, but knowing it’s not truly the end, not really. 

    So when I come home, and find it changed—or is it I who am changed?—I will not weep, for this adventure has not finished. Instead I’ll remember the good things and smile because it happened. I might not be Frodo or Sam or Aragorn or Éowyn, but I can remember their stories as I live out my own. They’re the kind of stories that stay with you forever. 

  Hope. Hope for the good times, and to endure through the hard. For a wonderful adventure, and a bittersweet ending. For good to prevail in the end. For Christ to return and redeem His people once and for all. 

    Coming home isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning. 

Isn’t this a beautiful quote?

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Thanks for reading! If you have Thoughts, please let me know. I’d love to hear!

Namarië,

Astrya