“If you can’t hold on, if you can’t hold on, hold on….”
Hi friends.
It’s been a few months since my last blog update, and honestly, life has exploded since then.
Through God’s immediate grace, I’ve completely bypassed 3 financial goals months before they were due. This STILL boggles my mind. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
My most recent fundraiser raised $2820, which has put me over $13k, which was my goal to be reached by November 13th.
I still have one last fundraiser coming up in August, and am optimistic that will be able to push me through to my final end goal of $17k hopefully before I even step foot on the Race.
God is unbelievably faithful, and good, and I am intimately blessed with the communities He has raised up in my life and the support people have been giving to me so generously and so unexpectedly.
I now only have something like 34 or 35 days left until training camp in August, and am so looking forward to meeting the rest of my team face-to-face! I’ve already been getting to know them through Facebook and group text, and they have such dear, open, ready hearts and a love of laughter and I’m genuinely just excited to start walking this journey together with them. They’re good people, real people, with real struggles and real grounded outlooks on life, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that quality in them.
Not to freak anyone out or anything, but launch on October 2nd is only 86 days away! (And by anyone, I mostly just mean myself. Not to freak myself out…. Too late. Already freaking.) Honestly, though, that’s what I came here to write about today.
This past week it’s really started to hit me that I’ll be leaving for a year, and truth be told, I’m going to miss the crap out of everyone in my day-to-day life so stinking much, I’m not sure how I can possibly leave them.
I love my life right now. Let me just say that again: I. LOVE. MY. LIFE right now.
I love my job, and the amazing, funny, warm, lovely, supportive, sassy people I work with and see pretty much every day. I love that I hang out with my coworkers on my days off, because we’re not just coworkers, we’re real, honest, deeply involved friends and we actively WANT to spend time together outside of work. I LOVE my church, and the inspiring women I do Bible study (and life) with and the loving people who serve our church with such overwhelming dedication. I LOVE my family and how we still enjoy spending time together, even after a lifetime of spending time together. I can’t imagine going an entire year without seeing my very best friends’ faces and feeling their hugs and hearing their pep talks and their words of encouragement, and not being able to contact them at a moments’ notice because they’re always around and easy to reach.
How am I going to survive a year without these people that I love so very much?
How am I going to survive a year without snuggling my sweet, smelly, loved-up puppy?
How am I going to survive a year without being able to run to one of my oldest friends in my saddest moments and tell him, “Please just give me one of your ‘buck up, Hannah’ pep talks, because I’m freaking out.”
How am I going to survive a year without driving around aimlessly with Becca, listening to music and talking about every minute, boring details of our lives?
How am I going to survive a year without playing Jenga after an extremely busy night at work with my friends?
How am I going to survive a year without barbecues, birthday parties, ‘just catching up’ drinks, weddings, life milestones, good shoulder cries, my favorite-in-the-whole-wide-world hugs, or giggle fits in friendships that are basically older than dirt?
I remember having thoughts like these when I first started out on this journey eight months ago, but back then everything was still theoretical. I had no idea if the money would come in, I had no idea if God would keep the door open. I had 10 long months before me to figure it all out… But now it’s really real, it’s really happening, and it’s happening really soon. Eight months have flown by at an unnaturally rapid pace and now I really only have a little over two months left before goodbye comes hard and fast and a year full of unknowns and interrupted routines will begin.
I’ve been crying a lot this week. Tears have been welling up like floodwaters behind my eyes. At work, in the car, watching fireworks on the 4th, during meals, when I listen to literally any random song on the radio.
I’m so excited and blessed and pumped to go on this adventure and this journey and to see how God will work in my life and in my squadmates’ lives and in the lives of the people we meet-
but right now, this week, in this moment: I can’t help but feel a rolling sadness pass through each part of me. The reality of how much life is changing and will change and how every little movement and sound in life is starting to resonate with goodbye is settling down into all the corners of my world.
Departures and goodbyes are not final. I know this. I will still have these people as soon as I return, and they are not going to completely abandon my memory while I am gone and move on without me. Things will happen and life will change but I will return and they will still be here and they will still love and accept me, and I will still need them, but perhaps in different ways than I do now.
I know it’s not the end of the world, but departures and goodbyes are still real, and they’re still painful. At the end of the day, I’m still leaving. It’s still going to be for a whole year, and a lot can happen in one year. At the end of the day, there are still a million and one little hurts and unknowns and surprises and moments that knock the wind right out of you that could happen, and will happen, and I will not be around for any of them.
But at the end of the day, I have to remember that I am not alone through this sadness. I have about 60 other people experiencing the same feelings that will be going on the same journey with me, not to mention an infinite God who searches and knows all the corners of my heart, and is the greatest empathizer in the entire cosmos.
He carries us in the palms of His hands, and He shares our hurts, and our sorrows, our joys and our burdens, and He is the one who has called me to this journey. He alone has a purpose for me, through me, on this Race, and wherever He leads me to, there is no possible better place for me to be. This alone brings me comfort during weeks like these.
Thanks for listening, and for your continued, unending support that blows me away every single day. You are all my heroes. <3
Love,
Hannah
