Is it Easier Leaving or Being Left?

What's Easier: Leaving - or - Being Left?

I have left many places in my lifetime.  I've left jobs - sometimes on my own accord, twice not of my choosing.  I've left relationships, friendships, cities, and the biggest, I left my parents' home to marry and move in with my husband.  All of these, while challenging and difficult and not without their share of sadness, had me looking ahead to what the new adventure held - what exciting things were on the horizon.

Still, it hurts to leave.  It is painful to realize an era is ending.  It stings the heart severely in a way, wrapped with the understanding that in order for something new to begin, something else may need to end.  There is no way around it - endings are hard.  Whether it is realizing you will never again be a child and even if you were to return home to live, it won't ever be the same or, knowing you're leaving a work team that has made you a better person, loss occurs when a relationship changes.  

Then, there are the times I have been left.  Some are standard (i.e., expected) losses - one's emotional support coworker heads out for new and greater adventures.  Favorite neighbors venture into a new phase of life that takes them out of the area.  You have a falling out with someone that seemingly cannot be repaired.  

There are also the inevitable "kids growing up moving out" leavings.  Oh, that hurt is something that can't be quantified because each child leaves home under different circumstances.  Two of ours left for the military in vastly different ways and two went to college (one just a few hours away - one across the country).  A number of people laughed at me for being so bereft, but there is something about watching a part of your heart walk out the door and knowing you have little control to protect their physical bodies and spiritual souls in the day to day.

Then, there are some losses so brutal they threaten us to our very core.  One gift my husband brought into our marriage 36 years ago was two young boys who became part of my family, people I loved and cared for.  In 2017, our youngest son died unexpectedly and in 2023 my mother passed away after a long illness.  While death is inevitable, it is still a case of "being left."  And that being left?  Wow - THAT has a really painful kick to it.  

But, I ask you to think for a moment.  While being left is often out of our control and that pain unavoidable, leaving isn't always all it's cracked up to be, either, is it?  We are perhaps leaving the comfortable, the familiar - the known.  AND, we are venturing out into a world that has the potential to be cold and harsh, harmful, unwelcoming.  Leaving takes courage.  Leaving takes letting go.  It also means losing a piece of yourself as that, too, gets left behind.  It means losing the status you perhaps had of being the one who is the expert in your field.  You are starting over - you are becoming a newer version of yourself.   Something in us has to end so something new has the ability to spring forth.  I once had a therapist say to me, "No positive growth happens without pain."  THAT has played out repeatedly in my own life - and I'm sure in yours as well.   

We all know this. Still, when a job, a friendship, a relationship comes to an end, we may fight against it.  We may beg someone to stay.  We are lost because we can't control the situation.  We hurt - and - as human beings we do everything we can to avoid the hurting part of life.  But life has joys and life sometimes just really... for lack of a better word... sucks.  A familiar saying is, "Don't be sad it's over - be grateful it happened."  Okay - I do think there is some merit in that.  However, you can be grateful it happened while being sad it ended.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  

So, I will answer this as I answer many things.  Is it easier to be the one who is leaving?  Or is it easier to be the one who is being left?  

Yes.

And, it's also harder being in each position.  

Regardless, the one who NEVER leaves us?  Our Lord.  Jesus is always with us and no matter what, He will not abandon us, He will not forsake us and He will always show up for us.  So, in the joys of new beginnings and in the sorrows of inevitable endings, give thanks for the steadfastness of the Lord.