Meeting new people and seeing new places is lovely. Falling in love with both and becoming family is a gift from God! Saying good-bye a few short weeks later is pure torture.
I’ll be honest, I’m struggling right now. I’m sitting on a bus leaving a place that has truly been home for a month. I cannot even put into words the thoughts and feelings in my head and heart. The relationships built here are, for me, some of the best on my Race thus far. I have loved everybody I’ve met in these three months, but I definitely felt a closer bond this month. These goodbyes were the hardest yet. Many tears were shed, and there may have been some snot involved (sorry, tmi).
I’m not sure I can keep on doing this to myself. Giving my heart away and then having to part with it is not fun at all!
But actually I know I will. I have learned in the past that I am not losing pieces of my heart, though it may feel like it; rather I am gaining more places of love. Like building more rooms on to a house as your family grows, God is adding to my heart with every new friendship He brings into my life. Each of these people and places will always be a part of who I am no matter where God leads me. Sometimes the construction process stinks and accidents can happen, but the end result is a thing of beauty.
That is why I must trust this project to the Ultimate Contractor, the only heart Contractor. He is the only one who knows how to build a thing of beauty from the mess my heart is sometimes in. Only He can make room for all that He is doing. I just have to being willing and allow Him to do His work.
I would encourage you to be open to God as He wants to build your heart and life into a thing of beauty too. Maybe you are not going through the same situations as me, maybe you are, maybe yours are bigger, but whatever you are going through God wants to make it beautiful. Allow Him to take from you your mourning and give you dancing, and to give you a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness (Psalm 30:11 and Isaiah 61:3).
Through Christ,
Brooke
