A little over a year ago I was sitting in my apartment wondering how on earth I could sum up my entire college experience and my entire future in one pretty graduation cap decoration. It took a few days but I finally settled on a quote I love:
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
I’m not sure if I actually even fully understood it at the time but I think I’ve been getting a bigger and bigger glimpse of it since being on the World Race.
I’ve now worked at 7 different ministries in 6 different countries. I’ve spent time on 4 different teams. I’ve fallen in love with people, cities, and landscapes all over the world. And yet I continuously have to say goodbye. Over and over and over again. We can’t get to the next best thing God has for us if we aren’t willing to say goodbye to where we are now.
For some this might mean physical places. In the past year or so I’ve had to say goodbye to my life in Oklahoma, my house in Cleveland, and my home at camp, at least for a time. I’ve left behind 6 ministries already and will leave behind 5 more before we are through. It’s hard but I can’t learn what God wants to teach me in the next place if I’m not willing to leave this one behind.
For some this might mean leaving behind people. In the past year I’ve had to leave behind all my friends and family in the States. I’ve left behind teenage girls that I loved to bake cakes with in Honduras. I’ve left my mango-peeling friend in El Salvador. I’ve left a crazy drummer friend in Albania. I’ve left the world’s most ornery little boy in Zambia. I love each one of them in their own way. But I had to say goodbye so that I could meet the rest of the people God has divinely appointed me to meet this year.
For still others, it might mean leaving landscapes behind. For me, this is especially hard. I’m a naturalist. That means I see and understand who God is through being in His creation. I can’t tell you how much I miss the red dirt of Oklahoma or the view from atop the zipline in Ohio or the pine tree forest in Honduras or the volcano from Antigua or the cliffs in El Salvador or the Adriatic Sea in Albania or Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe. I miss seeing God in those ways. But had I never left the rolling hills of Ohio I never would have experienced any of those other places.
You see, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
It’s hard. It’s incredibly hard. Maybe even one of the hardest things we will ever do. But we must say goodbye to this time’s beginning so we can experience what God has for us in the next one.
