Hey! I’m Tommy Rychener, I’m from Arizona, I recently moved to North Carolina, and I like trees a lot. If you have not yet had the pleasure of visiting the Southwest, I definitely recommend. I may be biased but the Sonoran Desert is truly beautiful. Cacti, mountains, and sunsets you would not believe. But, after living in the desert for 22 years, I was ready for some trees! I love green lawns and tall timber and it’s unfortunately difficult to come by when the city you live in averages a high of 109.8 degrees for an entire month, so my first few weeks here have turned every moment I spent outside into a moment of embarrassing, childlike wonder at the vegetation along the highway. 

But, in the process of moving to a new state and forging new relationships, a lot was left behind. C.S. Lewis seems to arrange words of the English language into ways which transcend simple thought, and speak to the core of us broken humans. Although I am usually a fan of these quotes, I find they sometimes strike too close to home much like his quote from The Four Loves. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one….  lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.… The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” Leading up to my move across the country, I found myself distancing, isolating, and retreating from the joys of this world. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but I was bracing for impact, the impact of loss. I was, for the first time, going to have to say goodbye to my childhood best friends who had truly become brothers to me over our last 15 years together. I was going to leave my parents and sisters, who had walked with me through every peak and every valley this life has thrown at me. I was going to be leaving comfort, safety, and control for the first time in a very long time, and let me tell you, I was doing my best to avoid that loss. But just like Lewis said, hiding from the loss also means hiding from the joy. My heart had grown stale, my soul weary, and my life was no longer the joyful reflection of Christ in me. Sure I had done a great job not experiencing months of grief, but I did an even better job not experiencing months of happiness. 

And then I moved. Packed up my truck and left AZ. Said goodbye to my family and looked toward new adventures, secretly hoping the searing pain of loss and grief would stay in the heat of Arizona and let me start fresh. But that’s not how life works, that’s not how the heart works, and that’s not how God works. He is not interested in preventing pain, but redeeming it. And I can not completely articulate how incredible and awful that is to hear. But like Lewis said, “Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken”. Without heartbreak, there can be no true love. What paradoxically terrifying and hopeful news that is. The biggest of oofs that God has so wonderfully designed for us. 

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