Learning through the tears….

                 
              

                As the days roll on and life passes me by I’ve begun to realize that in just 4 days I will be meeting my new family. I will be meeting the people that I will spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week for the next year of my life with. A flood of emotions came over me as I said my first “goodbye for a year” to a very dear friend of mine. He had come to visit me for the weekend since it had been a few months since we had seen each other last and also since it would be the last time we would be able to see each other before I leave on this great adventure. The whole weekend we laughed and had a great time hanging out with some of my friends and then Sunday afternoon rolled around and it was time to say goodbye. I had known it was coming but had just chosen not to think about it, not realizing I would be so upset by it. As we stood their hugging it hit me like a ton of bricks and the tears just starting pouring out. It was then that the reality of what was happening finally set in; I realized that for the next two months I would be saying a lot of goodbyes. 

 

 

I have never been much of a “home-body”, never missed home when I go on vacations or mission trips, never cried when I left for college. Even when I was away at college for those 4 years I didn’t go home that often and I didn’t call my parents a lot (which I’m sure was hard for them). The only time in college when I really cried and wanted to be at home was when my back problems first hit me, and I was in so much pain. I’ve just always loved to travel and get away and experience new things which is why I wasn’t to worried about being gone for this next year. I knew I would miss everyone but I also knew they would be missing me more.    But this weekend it occurred to me that I have no idea what I will be experiencing over the next year, I have no idea if I will be getting hurt or sick or if I will be in any real danger. I don’t know if I will be great at preaching the gospel to the nations or if I will be better at healing people through prayer. I don’t know if God will show me a foreign country that I am meant to work in or if I will realize I’m meant to work back in the states. I don’t know if I will miss home or if I will never want to go back. And I realized that is why I am doing this mission trip, I am going out on my own to follow God’s direction for my life to completely put all my trust and faith in him. This is something that honestly, I’ve never really completely done. I have always known that the Lord is with me and that he would protect me. I’ve trusted that what happens in my life happens for a reason and its according to his plan but to be honest, I have still always held on to some little piece of my life that I thought I could just control on my own, something that was just mine and that he didn’t really understand. I figured that with all the billions of people that he has to take care of that he didn’t need to worry about my whole life and that I could just take care of some things on my own. But as I told my friend goodbye and we stood there hugging each other he reminded me that I am going to be doing great things over this next year and that I will be just fine. He told me that he could tell how much my friends and family loved me and that I was a very lucky girl to have such a strong support system here at home. That I just have to trust in the Lord and he will see me though every struggle, every smile, every tear, every sickness, and every miracle. 

 

This Friday the 27^th I will be flying to Atlanta, GA and meeting my squad, from there we will be driving to Gainesville, GA and spend the next 10 days bonding and learning about each other and learning how to better share the gospel with the world. We will be broken down to our core and built back up with his amazing love, we will cry, and we will laugh. We will grow into a family – one body of Christ that will be sent out into the world June 1^st to further God’s kingdom, to share his love and grace with the broken hearted in 11 different countries. So even though I’m beginning to get nervous about what I will be experiencing at training camp, I am putting my faith and trust in the Lord and I know that he will show us how to completely trust him and each other with every aspect of our lives. He will be there with us this coming year when tensions arise and stress levels are high. He will be there with us to comfort us when what we encounter breaks our hearts and he will be there with us when we rejoice as people commit their lives to following him.  Through everything that the Lord shows us, we will all be in it together.