Journey
Sharon’s mother has died.
Tonight
there’s no sleep
on my side
of the moonlit bed
only the thought
of Sharon’s grief
unwinding along
the weary miles
to Michigan
and home again,

the long, slow trip
to childhood space
subsumed within
a greater span
of painful ache
too sharp, too new
to truly name—
the sense of loss
so close at hand
it all but stops
a daughter heart.
—Julie Gochenour

Sharon Jantzi Kraybill, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, wrote “Finding Our Way Home” while driving home after saying good-bye to her mother, who died the next evening. Under sponsorship of Eastern Mennonite Missions, and serving with husband Herb, Kraybill taught English in Nazareth, Ethiopia for 14 years. She now does some teaching for the Eastern Mennonite University degree completion program in Lancaster. She is always looking for excuses to converse with Scripture and hold her new granddaughter Raewyn.

Julie Gochenour, Sharon’s friend, wrote “Journey” on receiving e-mail from Sharon telling of her mother’s death and that Sharon was driving back to the funeral. Neither knew at the time of the other’s poem. Julie, member of the Religious Society of Friends, is completing her M.A.R. She and husband Gary live on the family farm in Maurertown, Virginia.