Okay, so technically, hugging our parents at launch was the first goodbye, but now it’s time to leave the place that we’ve learned to be home here. It’s time to leave the place that we were never originally supposed to be going to, but quickly became the place where we began writing this story (praise Jesus for route changes, amirite?).
Ecuador stole your water bottles and your hearts. Maybe returning to Quito quickly inserted itself onto your bucket list or maybe you’re counting down the days because you couldn’t be any more “so done” with the weird white corn stuff. You climbed its volcanoes and jumped off its waterfalls and loved its people. You brought Kingdom to pimps and hippies and little nuggets. Your tiny little hands made their print on this city.
So how do you say goodbye? For some, with a handshake and a plane ticket. For others, you’re forcibly prying your teary-eyed self off the streets of this beautiful city. For all of us, we’re leaving this place behind, but we’re searching for the peace of knowing that in doing so, we also brought Jesus to so many and He is most definitely not leaving them behind. I’ve struggled with having to say my goodbyes to the kids at the school and found myself wondering if I trusted God to take care of them as much as I taught them that He would.
I’ve learned a whole lot about Jesus and a whole lot about myself. I’m doing a Bible study right now called Mourning & Dancing. God created us as complex creatures, capable of feeling a whole range of emotions. Made in His image, we can both grieve the hard things and celebrate the sweetness of life. Today, the devotional was about grief and remembrance. Fitting, isn’t it?
Psalm 42:7-8
Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls;
all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me.
The Lord will send His faithful love by day;
His song will be with me in the night –
a prayer to the God of my life.
Sometimes the closing of chapters can make us feel pounded by those waves. Worried about what we’re leaving behind and if we could’ve done something better. Wondering what’s in store for the things to come. Ecuador was a place of beginnings and with the New Year approaching, it’s also a place of endings. It’s given us times of mourning and times of dancing. It broke us.
God showed us hard things not to remind us how ugly the world is, but to show us that the evil of the earth can steal our song, but it cannot stop us from singing. That He lives within us and He is love. He is hope. He doesn’t want the things we saw to consume us, but to change us. He reminds us that our living Spirits and the desire we have to see revival within this nation come from Him alone. As we hold these things deep in our hearts, we must remember that the root of our grief is love.
As we go into India, let’s remember what we saw and let it not exhaust us, but serve as a memory of a beautiful beginning and a beautiful ending. Let’s ring in this new year and move in to this new place with joyfully expectant hearts and feet ready to move.
