We Need More Words

As you may know (if you read my last post), on Sunday we're moving into our own church building, after 11 years and 3 months of planning, praying, waiting, and longing. It's a big time in the life of our church.

I have two definite feelings (or sets of feelings) about this, and I tend to feel them at the same time.

First, there is the joy, excitement, and delight at moving, at the new building, and at not having to move again after this one, or set-up-and-take-down every week, or haul stuff around. I can move all the Sunday School material that has been stored in my closet to the new building and leave it there. Also, the building is beautiful. The classrooms and the library are bigger than I pictured (the building plans meant nothing to me, except to count how many rooms there are). It's all fun and exciting and happiness.

And then there's the other feeling. We had the fun and exciting and happiness 11 years and 3 months ago when we started the church. It was a good time, and everything was new, and we looked forward to this day when we'd have a building of our own. But so many of the people who were there that Sunday won't be there this Sunday. Some have died, some have moved, and others have chosen to attend other churches. Mixed with all the happy emotion is the sorrow and grief and longing for those people, an almost overwhelming desire that they could all be here with us on Sunday.

I tried to find a word that describes how I've been feeling lately, but there doesn't seem to be one, and all my attempts have uncovered inadequate words. It's not ambivalent or bittersweet, since I don't have mixed feelings about the move (I'm genuinely excited about that). It's also not melancholy, since that focuses on the sorrow side (also, it's more of "sorrow with no discernible cause" and I know the cause). It's just....joy at what is, and a longing for what was, and the knowledge that things have changed we can't go back, and excitement about the future, and so many emotions at once!

English needs more words.