Our missions trip consists of a squad of nineteen. We are broken into smaller teams of five to seven people to serve different ministry hosts in each country we visit. Every couple of months there are team changes due to ministry needs and to encourage further growth in individuals by serving with new people.
We recently had our first team changes.
I want to acknowledge how much saying goodbye to my first team hurt. It hurt because they meant something to me.
Usually when I say goodbyes, it’s simple and easy. I don’t like to let others know how much it affects me. It is vulnerable to let people in on how much a goodbye hurts, because it reveals how much I care about the person. I wanted to keep the hurt in my heart and not reveal it. It feels safer that way.
But to withhold the hurt is to lighten what they’ve meant to me. I want it to hurt. Because they deserve it to hurt. And I want them to know it hurt. Because they deserve to know how much they’ve meant to me.
I sit here, in a living room in Botswana, amidst my new team. Small occurrences remind me of my previous team members. My heart beats with a simple joy, but also with a resting sadness. I sit here with the fears that my old teammates will make better connections and closer friendships with the people on their new team. Part of me knows that I’m being stupid to feel so easily replaced. But part of me also knows that there is truth in this fear. That my previous team members could honestly make closer connections with other people. That the next time I see them, our friendship will have changed simply because time has moved on and we weren’t in each others lives the same way. And I have to be okay with that change.
That’s why goodbyes hurt so much. It’s an acknowledgement of potential change. The next time I see them, maybe the distance will affirm our friendship, we see each other and appreciate each other more for the time we weren’t together. Or maybe we will meet and there will still be a distance between us even as we hug hello. The potential of it hurts. It’s not always a goodbye to the person, but it’s a goodbye to what you had with the person. I have to be grateful for the blessing of the friendship as it was, and I have to trust God with what it will become the next time I see them.
To Team United, “okay, goodnight.“
