Hey loved ones!!
“Life is not measured by the amount of breathes you take, but the amount of moments that take your breath away.”
I love this quote. It is proverb-like truth. No one gets to age 90 and is thankful for all of the days they had, but rather the amount of precious, wonderful, life altering moments they accumulated.
As I’m leaving my ministry from Cambodia, I can’t help but think of how much I would love to move Cambodia into my house in Michigan. Then I could be in this place, with these people all the time. I am very sad to leave Cambodia, I can honestly only say that about one other country so far on my race. The other countries have been great but it takes a perfect recipe to make a country wonderful 🙂
The one down part to the world race IS leaving. Leaving happens once a month, 11 times total. Learning how to leave is an important, underrated skill. Sometimes leaving is welcome, but usually it’s hard. The harder the better though. As it is an indicator of how wonderful of a month you had. This is where attitude and thankfulness play such a huge role.
Hard goodbyes, teary eyes accompanied with waving out of windows yelling “See ya in Heaven”‘s are common for missionaries following Jesus. Especially on the world race. 11 months, 11 goodbyes, many times to people you may very well not see again until heaven. In Heaven though, we will celebrate forever. As I said before I am thankful for having a loved one to say a hard goodbye to. While having to say goodbyes are hard, having nothing to say goodbye to is much worse.
I’m a pretty sentimental guy, I get attached to loads of stuff, I have to say many goodbyes, but have had way more good times leading up to days I have to leave.
This started when I was real young. I loved school, all my friends, recess, PE, lunch break and everything else good. Every year I would get so sad when school ended, I walked into summer break heart broken that I wouldn’t see my friends from school for a while. Day 2 of summer break I’d wake up remembering how awesome summer was, I was MADE for summer! This would last until the end of August when school started again.I would be sad that summer time was over and that I was getting so old, now a 3rd grader instead of a 2nd grader. Life flies.
This vicious cycle lasted for years. It infected everything I would do, sports, spring break, visiting cousins. Everything made me sad because I loved them soo much.
I decided I couldn’t continue like this, as a Christian my life will always be filled with amazing adventures and amazing people. The God-filled life is definitely a deeply relational, mightily experiential life. This breeds wonderful experiences and hard goodbyes. Because I wasn’t willing to close off my heart or God’s lifestyle, I came up with a great way to handle the hard goodbyes 🙂
A + DAY’s
An A+ day is as good as a day as one can have. Your day can literally not go any better. Do this seven times and you have an A+ week; times four, an A+ month; add eleven and you end up with an A+ year. That’s all you can do, live large with no regrets to the best of your ability. After that, even if you could go back and repeat, it’d still only be as good an A+. If you sincerely follow Jesus most everyday ends as an A+ Day.
I will miss my Cambodian friends dearly. But I can rest peacefully knowing my team and I ROCKED ministry this month. Absolutely killing it for Jesus. It was uber enjoyable. Wonderfulness. Definitely an A+ 🙂
I’m already excited about what opportunities God will open up as we move onto our next chapter in Vietnam 🙂
Be sure to have nothing less than an A+ day, you deserve it, the people around you deserve it, God made it and you only get one shot.
– Jake
(If you’d like to find out WHY Cambodia was so great, read the next blog “Rice Field Island”)
