Tickets...

Monday I went to book tickets.  It was a bit like booking tickets for a vacation though.  I set up plans to see my parents and my sister in the countries they now live in.  (Whit goes August 2nd.)  I got those set.  And even though that is when I’ll quit my work here it didn’t carry much finality.  It makes the most sense for me to fly roundtrip from here.  So I’ll be back on the night of September 27, for one day.  

Then Tuesday morning the others showed up.  Our business manager is booking my stateside tickets.  My itinerary was in my inbox Tuesday morning.  It was a bit tough.  It carried plenty of finality and way to much weight.  I haven’t quite been myself since.  It hurts to think of leaving.

It is odd.  I am ready.  I’m ready for a new adventure.  I’m ready for discovering what is next.  I’m ready to find people I will spend the next stage of life with.  But it also hurts to leave a place I love.  I left my hometown when I graduated…it carried finality.  I left my college town when I graduated…again it made sense.  I left my grad school town when I finished.  All of these are times that it makes sense to go on.  Everything for me had finished there.  Now of course I still had family when I left my hometown, but my responsibilities, etc. were over.

I leave here and things don’t end.  The work continues; I just leave it.  The lost are still lost and those being discipled are still I process.  My team stays hard at work and September 8th looks just like September 7th for them.  But for me it doesn’t.  For me my time here ends but my life here continues.  

I read a book once that said once you go to Africa it gets in your blood.  You may hate it or you may love it; but it never goes away.  It got in my blood in the summer of 2003.  Now it is more than in my blood; it is like a piece of me that I will always carry.  Physically leaving will be hard, but I’m ready.  At the same time I’ll never leave this place.  An even more amazing part is Africa didn’t stop with me.  It got Mom and Dad; it got Whitney.  I hope it isn’t done grabbing hold of my loved ones.