The military life makes you acutely aware of lasts. Last Christmas in Okinawa, last cherry blossom season, last dinner with friends (for a while). I thought I would have a couple more months before the PCS tilt-a-whirl began spinning again, but I found myself a little dizzy on it this week. We are still waiting for our orders to come through– orders sending us back to the states in less than five months, but that doesn’t stop our friends from packing up their household goods and getting on planes before us. I had a dream earlier this week that my friend Carrie S. (who will likely move the same month we do) called me and in a conspiratorial tone said, “You need to get down to the TMO office and get your household goods weight waiver form. We’re here now!”

“You got orders?” I asked. “I don’t think we have orders. How did you get through IPAC so fast?”

“Don’t worry about that. Get down here. You need this form, stat!”

I hung up and called Matt.

“Did we get orders?”

“Yes.”

“The Stuarts are at TMO and said we need to get down there right now for the weight waiver form!”

I woke up still orderless with crates, deadlines, and endless paperwork on my mind. This morning, Matt headed to a service for a chaplain and his wife moving in the next week or two. More upsetting is the knowledge that the next four months will feel like I am bleeding my favorite people as they pour off island to new duty stations without me. Invariably, I will try to figure out how to shorten our wait, thinking that if I can leave sooner it will hurt less. It won’t. A new chaplain family asked me a couple years ago if it gets easier, and I said, “No, it never does. You just know what to expect—the grief, the fatigue, the joy of memories, the anticipation of a new place. It’s a landslide every time.” I don’t think they were encouraged.

We’re fighting to stay in the moment—I have noticed a couple of our kids making conscious decisions not to join this or that because “We’re leaving soon.” I encourage them to keep engaging, while I fight my own inclinations to just hide under the covers each day. We’ll finish well. It’s what we do. Our people in front of us deserve all the love and attention we can only give because we are loved by One so much greater than us. Even once we touch down stateside and settle into a new place, we won’t be home yet—I think that is the greatest gift this military life has given me.

And so we wait. Counting the lasts and holding them as blessings before they trickle through our fingers. I’m looking into the gray sky today with a smile, knowing the cherry blossoms are opening right on time, splayed open and rejoicing on Mt. Yaedake this morning, knowing the pines are standing tall and green beneath the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, knowing the tide is tumbling in and out of the Southern California sunshine on San Onofre Beach, and knowing we are exactly where we are meant to be for now.