This topic hits me a little harder than it may others. Even thinking about what I should write brings some sorrow to my heart and tears to my eyes.

A train is created for a specific purpose, to transport something from one location to another. Whether it is to transport freight or passengers, trains travel long distances and stop at many destinations along the way to drop them off. In life, we have a lot of people and things that get on our train at one point, and then get off at another.

At times, it feels like more people have gotten off your train than on. As a child, you don’t really have a choice who you let on your train. Those kids you hang out with were allowed to be there by your parents. The adults that influence you in school are put there for a period of time to teach you. But eventually you know that they will get off your train because that part of your life is passed. The kids in elementary school move to a different middle school and then high school. They don’t really have a way to decide whether they stay or go. That comes later when you can make your own decisions.

But let’s slow down for a moment. While we are in school, we can have those that are on our train, but don’t really want anything to do with us. High school relationships are an example of that. Those you enter high school with as friends are not always the friends you leave with. That is a time of growing up and developing who you are and who you want to be as an adult.

There will always be people we meet and get to know, but may never be close with. They will still be in your life, or on your train, but they may not be a big influence or a key passenger. You may not even realize the exact stop they got off at. It’s the people that get on your train that want to be a part of your life who all of a sudden leave that make the goodbye process that much harder.

Growing up I had a lot of people in my life that left for one reason or another. I didn’t have the typical childhood that most do, the kids I was in nursery with were the same kids I graduated high school with. Sure, the number went down over the years, but I knew my senior class better than most that graduate from a typical high school.

College was where new people came into my life and the adults that were around me as a child became my friends. But this is also where I learned that people can choose to get off my train of life whenever they wanted. Slowly through my college years and early adulthood, one person after another left my train. A friend decided she didn’t want to follow God so she left at a platform where she could look for a guy that could fill that gap in her life. Then another friend got caught messing around with a guy out of marriage, so she was removed from my train by those that knew it was wrong. I also had one that committed suicide thus leaving to be with God. But out of all the people leaving, the ones that hurt the most were the people that were on the train acting like they liked me and wanted to help me mature in life, but then behind my back wanted nothing to do with me.

I don’t want to go into a lot of details, but in a few short years I went from having a lot of people on my train, to having only 2 passengers. And those passengers were my parents, who were on my train from the beginning. Even though there were times when my parents were having struggles, they never left me. But everyone I knew and grew up with all got off my train, and pretty much said that they would never get back on. This is when I moved to Minnesota, and prayed that God would bring someone, anyone, into my life again, so I wouldn’t continue in my lonely state.

It took a while and moving to a couple different churches, but slowly God brought one person after another into my life that He knew would be good for me. I may not have a lot of people on my train that are close with me, but they are people that I have slowly learned to trust and love, like my husband. If all those people hadn’t gotten off my train before I came to Minnesota, I would never have met him.

My husband worked really hard, to be a part of my life. After so many people leaving and hurting me, it was really hard for me to accept and trust new people onto my train. He and many of my friends had to help me to see that they were wanting to be on my train for the right reasons and for the long ride.

There are still people that come and go from my train, but God has helped me to see that when someone decides to leave, I still have him guiding my train and I will never be alone. He knows what I need and he will bring people into my life that will help me and maybe… just maybe… because of what I have gone through, I can help them. My life has totally changed over the years: I have no one from my past aboard my train, but I have a wonderful group of new friends that are on and ready to take the ride.