A few days ago, I was looking at my schedule to figure out how many Sundays I had left here at home. I wanted to see what Sundays I had available to speak in different churches and realized I had a total of 11 Sundays before July (four of which are already booked with speaking engagements and Training Camp).
As I was in scheduling mode, I realized I had a lot of things left to do. Some of those things include spending time with my friends. Then it hit me: I’m actually leaving. Not only am I actually leaving to serve God and bring the Gospel to the nations, but also, I’m leaving friends and family that I care about deeply.
All of this happened at work and I felt so overwhelmed that I knew the waterworks were about to turn on. I had a little under an hour left to be at work, so I busied myself with work-related tasks so I wouldn’t have to deal with actual emotions.
After work, I got into my car, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m leaving my friends. I’m leaving Vanessa. I’m leaving Tati. I’m leaving Katy. I’m leaving Abby. I’m leaving Ita. Nothing will be the same when I get back.” I began to cry. Emotions and thoughts that I had suppressed for so long finally burst into a moment of weeping before the Lord asking Him to take it away because I didn’t want to deal with it. I was on my way to a Bible study for crying out loud! (No pun intended)
I couldn’t stop crying. Despite my tears, I began to ask the Lord what was happening, “God, why am I crying?” I began to sort through these emotions. The Lord reminded me how all of these relationships had pushed me to pursue Christ and allowed me to grow as a woman. Each memory with my friends reminded me of God’s goodness. He has been so good to provide friends with whom I studied, laughed, cried, and grew for the past few years. I am so thankful for each girl. These are my homegirls, my friends, my sisters.
As I think of my time with my sisters, I can’t help but to think about people in Scripture. I don’t know how they dealt with all of these emotions. There are so many times in Scripture where God tells people to leave and they just obey. The most amazing part is that there are passages that talk about how these people feel. For example, Paul talks about how he longs to be with his brothers and sisters in Christ in one of his letters. Although he was dealing with these emotions, Paul continued to serve God. He persevered in the faith and was able to set aside his own heartaches because he knew that there was work to be done.
During my time with the Lord, He showed me it was okay to have these emotions. I am human. I am glad that it’s happening now. This will help me cope with their absence while I’m away. Though I will be physically absent in my friends’ lives, I know that when we get together later in life, it will be like old times. I know that transitions will happen in all of our lives within the next year (moving to a new state, going to school, *possibly* having children), but God has showed me that it’s part of life and everything will be okay. We go through seasons and my season of being so closely knit with these girls is coming to an end. Not needing to, God has given me friends that I will probably stay in contact with for the rest of my life. Who knows, maybe after undergoing all of these transitions, we will laugh, cry, share, and grow in the Lord in the future as if nothing around us has changed.
