As launch is quickly approaching, there is a question I’ve been asked a lot:
How do you feel?
And, honestly, I don’t usually know how to answer that question.
I’m excited. Excited to reunite with my squad. Excited to be a part of what God is doing in the World, to learn more about His people, and experience His creation.
I’m anxious. Anxious because I don’t have all the details, and I like to have all the details. Anxious because packing for a year of unknowns in a bag that weighs less than 50 lbs is hard. Anxious because the future is full of unknowns.
I’m thankful. Thankful for a God that loves me deeply and orchestrates my life. Thankful for the people who have so generously supported me and have been lifting me up in prayer over the last year. Thankful for this opportunity.
I’m conflicted. Conflicted because I want to fill my schedule with people I love and all the things I’ll miss while I’m gone, but I also want to retreat and just spend time alone because I know alone time will be all but nonexistent in this coming year. Conflicted because I want to leave, but a part of me also want to stay—to make it to my friends weddings, to experience life with the people that I love back at home. While I’ve accepted that I will be missing a year in their lives, it doesn’t make it easy.
And, even with so many emotions co-existing inside me, I often find myself numb to them. I’ve found myself compartmentalizing my emotions in order to focus on what’s at hand and to live more fully where I am at. But, I also am finding that my mind cannot wrap itself around the enormity of the journey I am about the embark on because the concept of it is so foreign. The longest I’ve been away from home was probably when I spent three weeks in Turkey four years ago, so my mind has a hard time comprehending what eleven months in eleven different countries looks and feels like.
So, with five days left at home, I’m feeling excited, anxious, thankful, conflicted, and sometimes numb. But, I am also confident that God is with me in this journey as I was reminded by Bob Goff in this quote I read this morning:
“Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, ‘Let’s go do that together.’”
And, ultimately, in the middle of all of my conflicting emotions, I feel peace.
