Words by Luke Eldredge
Images by Olga Tereshenko

Locking the coffee shop door for the last time, I expected trumpets and a feeling of ecstasy. What I got were fragments of conversations wafting from the nearby brewery and crushing isolation.

I mopped the floors for the last time, closed the till for the last time, cleaned the espresso machine and countless other pieces of essential equipment familiar in any third-wave coffee shop for the last time. I had been working in coffee to help pay the bills while studying in grad school. 

As anyone who works in the service industry can tell you, it’s hard work—spending the day on your feet, navigating the stress of rushes and the frustration customers take out on you. But I had finally mopped my last floor. I was done with the feeling that my college degree meant nothing. I was done with the service industry. But as I locked the door and walked away from my last closing shift and a story three years in the making, one year at this specific job, I felt no gratification, only loss.

Olivia was immediately aware of my despondency. Opening the door to our apartment, she met me with an enthusiasm that I couldn’t match. Being asked what is wrong, I told her I wanted a celebration feast. Having walked across the parking lot after leaving my last day of work, I realized that this was an end to a story, but only for me. The coffee shop would go on as if I had never been there, and most of the co-workers I had forged a bond with had already moved on to other opportunities. I wanted the end of this story to be celebrated and honored. 

I wanted to gather around the table with the men and women I had lived through this season of my life with, to eat together, to share stories, to celebrate, to raise a glass, to mark the end of a season. 

I love Arthurian legends. One of my favorite parts of every tale of a knight-errant is when he returns home to King Arthur’s court and all his stories are told. Everyone who journeyed with and fought alongside the knight receives their chance to raise a glass and tell their part of the story. But sadness descended, as I knew this part of my story would end and be instantly forgotten. No stories would be told. No glass raised. My heart was not made for such a shallow ending, or such a shallow way to live a life. My heart was made for the Kingdom of God.

I love those stories of knights returning to Camelot after an adventure to be met with a feast and celebration because it is an image of the wedding feast after Christ’s return, when all our stories get told, all the unknown acts of bravery and sacrifice are shared, and all the hidden sufferings honored. The heart within me longs for the Kingdom it was created for, and its longings are not met in the shallow “now and not yet” of this world. Olivia and I were recently at a wedding where we didn’t know anyone, not a single soul, save the bride and groom. We had traveled a few states over, and because of that distance none of our other friends could make it. The social anxiety of walking into a room full of people I don’t know is petrifying. But we instantly made a connection. 

Olivia and I began a conversation with college friends of the bride that lasted the whole evening, transferred to a bar after the rehearsal dinner, and was picked back up at the reception the next day. The ease of the conversation and the instant intimacy felt like stepping into a favorite pair of dancing shoes I forgot that I owned. Our hearts let out a contented sigh. But as we left the wedding, we were drowned in a feeling of loss. 

The new friends we had made live across the country, and seeing them again feels so unlikely. Why aren’t all of our relationships like this? After drinking in the pleasure of genuine and deep connection, we can’t help but feel like we are skimming the surface of friendship. And even those shallow levels feel so hard fought for and hard-won. Our hearts are made for more, when the veils between us are removed, and we can truly see one another.

Every Christmas season, Olivia and I watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Last year we dove into the extended editions. Despite the joy that the movies bring, we are always left despondent when they end. And yet every year we return and enter into the cycle of joy and inexplicable loss. There is something about the epic and mythic nature of that story that reminds us of the epic and mythic story of God—filled with danger, beauty, sacrifice, and ultimate redemption. As we leave that vivid world, our own lives seem so dull in color. Our hearts were made to live in such a story, do live in such a story, but the world we live in does everything it can to tell us that we do not. Our hearts carry the longing for a world that has not yet fully arrived. It is nostalgia for a place we have never been, nostalgia for the Eden some part of our eternal soul remembers.

At the etymological level of its Greek roots, nostalgia means “pain,” and “return home.” Other translations have it as the “wound of home” that we carry with us. This wound is piqued in moments of longing, where some experience seems to jog a forgotten memory of desire. And it is painful because it is a reminder of a desire that cannot be met in this life. But knowing that my heart was made for an eternal kingdom is such a better explanation than simple ennui or selfish disappointment, and it leads me to chase as much of the Kingdom as I can, here and now. 

Though I did not get the Arthurian celebration feast that my heart desired, my Kingdom heart did tell me to pay attention to the moment, reminded me that it was significant, that it mattered, and that it needed to be celebrated, even in the simple way of toasting a glass with Olivia in our small apartment.