Five Minute Friday ~ ...Ways to Say Goodbye

Anyone else's teens waste significant portions of time and find inordinate amounts of humor in staring at YouTube videos?

Mine do.

At least a couple of times each week, one of those teens will come running to me Kindle afire with the latest "thing" among their peers, which - because of their TCK experience - is a wide and varied group, with friends literally all over the world.

Last summer, this song was one of those things. Maybe because we'd just finished a painful, hard but also right season of ending and striving to do so well, this song struck a chord. I hadn't thought about it for months, but today, when I saw the word "finish," this song's melody was the first thing that popped into mind.

This song takes a very tongue-in-cheek look at a "break-up." Gal decides she no longer wants to date guy and ends it. Guy doesn't know what to say to all his friends and acquaintances and therefore comes up with all sorts of fantastical lies to explain to people why they are no longer a couple.  

My heart is paralyzed

My head was oversized

I'll take the high road like I should

You said it's not meant to be

That it's not you, it's me

You're leaving now for my own good

That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say

She went down in an airplane

Fried getting suntanned

Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand

Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!

She met a shark under water

Fell and no one caught her

I returned everything I ever bought her

Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies

And ways to say you died

My pride still feels the sting

You were my everything

Some day I'll find a love like yours (a love like yours)

She'll think I'm Superman

Not super minivan

How could you leave on Yom Kippur?

That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say

She was caught in a mudslide

Eaten by a lion

Got run over by a crappy purple Scion

Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!

She dried up in the desert

Drowned in a hot tub

Danced to death at an east side night club

Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies

And ways to say you died

I wanna live a thousand lives with you

I wanna be the one you're dying to love...

But you don't want to

That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say

That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say

She went down in an airplane

Fried getting suntanned

Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand

Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!

She met a shark under water

Fell and no one caught her

I returned everything I ever bought her

Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies

She was caught in a mudslide

Eaten by a lion

Got run over by a crappy purple Scion

Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!

She dried up in the desert

Drowned in a hot tub

Danced to death at an east side night club

Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies

And ways to say you died

The music video is absurd and quite frankly, ridiculous... as are the lyrics. It is usually the kind of thing I roll my eyes at and quickly try to forget.

I'll say it again ~ Maybe because we'd just finished a painful, hard but also right season of ending, this song hit close to home. We hadn't "broken up," at least not in the sense of this song. But God had convinced us that we wouldn't, at least not in the immediate future, be returning to that desert land in W. Africa that had totally captured our hearts and been our home for nearly 15 years.

Some days, our decision felt good and right.

But on a whole lot of days, it felt like failure: 

• that we weren't dedicated enough, 
• that our family had become more important than God, 
• that the inconveniences of life finally got to us, 
• that we were self-serving, 
• that - ultimately - we were "copping out," 
• that people would think we were weak, 
• that we'd wasted a huge chunk of our lives, 
• that we couldn't really be listening to God
• that we were disobedient and selfish...

Or worst of all?

...that we'd lost any vision.

Sometimes it felt this way because of the questions people would ask, confusion expressed as they tried to understand, or even actual not nice or kind comments. And the temptation was great, just as in this song, to embellish the truth - making threats seem a little larger than what we really experienced, drawing focus on the hard or scary or uncomfortable or unfair...

...instead of the mostly beautifully wonderful.

But most of the time, I couldn't trace that temptation back to anything other than simply a battle that waging inside: 

I wanted to convince my world I'd finished 

everything very well, with God-given grace and empowerment,

so I'd look good.

Oops!

Actually, "Oops!" is a gross understatement

For that's sin.

Seeking for myself any glory that only ever and rightly belongs to God.

And after struggling through that season of rebellion, after recognizing and confessing and seeking forgiveness for that sin, and then realizing that by God's grace and thanks to a hubby with lots of integrity - I didn't cross that line into hyperbole.

Now I can look back and see that in some areas, I did, by God's grace while living challenging circumstances so far out of my capacity to handle, finish well.

I can also look back and see things where I didn't finish well - and how I'm learning through those failures.

**************************************************************************************************

Head on over to Lisa-Jo's if you want to join us for this 5MF 

-actually turned into a 15MF for me- 

and be sure to link up, or comment and let me know.

I'd love to see what you write on the topic of "Finish."

*Song 50 Ways to Say Goodbye

by Train