I had a cry tonite about my move to Africa. I leave in 10 days. I am heartbroken. I feel as if a piece of my heart is dying. There is so much transition now and I am having a difficult time with it. Just this past week I left my position as Director of Administration, a job that I have occupied for 5 years. I am giving up my car tomorrow because the 3 year lease is up. I am in the process of packing up my house I have owned for almost 2 years. All of these things have proven to be consistent and routine for me, stability in the midst of 2 1/2 years of rockiness, pain, and uncertainty. And for someone who thrives on routine and predictibility, I am very challenged now.
One of the things that I am dreading is saying "goodbye" to those people most important to me. Now, I know that it is not really a "goodbye" but a "see you later." I have every intention of coming back from Africa in December. I will even get to see some of the people who are so near and dear to my heart when they come over to Africa during my stay there. What I am so fearful and anxious about when I do say my "goodbyes" in 10 short days is that I will not be able to convey in words and actions, what I feel in my heart. I have led a pretty remarkable and extremely blessed life over the past two years, a life that I never thought possible. And to a large extent I have my amazing family and friends to thank for this. I want to be able to tell them what they mean to me, how they have blessed my life in ways they hadn't even considered, how it breaks my heart to leave them.
Amongst the empty dresser drawers and the half-packed storage bins, from the empty shelves to the empty carport, there is an even greater emptiness and void that remains in my heart. A heart that is crying itself to sleep tonite.
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This is a note about change that has kept me inspired - when I'm feeling like you... Hopefully it can speak to you like it did me.
Blessings to you my brother
...And I could not have known then that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace south to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow's storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.
...
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.
- Donald Miller
from the intro to "through painted deserts"
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