I am sick and tired of saying goodbye.

This time of year is filled with various 'goodbyes.' High School and college graduates say goodbye to their schools to embark on another chapter of life. Friends move away to new and exciting work opportunities in different cities. Over the course of these past two weeks I've been invited to or attended six different occasions whose subject was 'goodbye.'

There are two types of people who say goodbye. The first kind says goodbye and never leaves. The second kind leaves and never says goodbye. I usually find myself in the latter camp, sneaking out the back door while everyone is hugging and doling out goodbyes.

All the words of goodbye are enough to make me want to curl up and hide out until everyone has left, because the truth is, it just hurts.

And it hurts because it was so meaningful.

I have a theory about meaning: meaning is impossible without relationship. To have a life of meaning is to have a life rich with relationships, filled with people, things, and places. If I say, "this place (and the people inside) meant something to me" I mean to say, "I had many relationships in this place."

The thing about relationships - real, dynamic, and mutually beneficial ones - is that they impact us. They leave us as people we never imagined we could be.

My gratitude to the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church community is for these meaningful and impacting relationships, which have left me so unimaginably different, so emboldened, so empowered. It has been such a privilege to join you all on the journey through ministry in both the South Loop and Lakeview neighborhoods this year.

Last week as I curled up to escape all the goodbyes happening around me, I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a Wes Anderson film), one of my all-time favorite movies. It's a film about a documentary-producing oceanographer just after his career seems to have peaked. In one scene the wife of Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), Eleanor (Angelica Huston), is leaving him after a heated argument. As she leaves, she says, "Goodbye, Steve."

Zissou looks at the ground sadly and says, "Don't say goodbye... say 'bon voyage.'" Eleanor turns back; just as she's about to board a seaplane, she says, "bon voyage!" with a wave.

So I, with so many goodbyes these days, am like Steve Zissou, left begging, don't say 'goodbye,' say 'bon voyage!'

Because there are roads ahead of us, adventures and journeys, callings and meaningful relationships that we can not even begin to imagine, so that the best I can do amid the tears shed in departure is to say something like, "have a good journey in the days to come."

Bon Voyage, Holy Trinity Lutheran.