Goodbyes are hard.

Sometimes we have family moving far away, or maybe a friend is off to college. Maybe you just say goodbye to the people in your life who you see everyday. Sometimes you have a friend or family member who’s gotten sick and might not make it, sometimes you get the chance to say goodbye, an sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes you get put on a team of 9 other women and when barely knowing who any of them are, you hop on a plane and head to a country in which the language isn’t your native tongue. This team becomes your family but as they become your family the people of this country begin to change your life and become people that you wish you could end up sharing your life with with forever.

But there comes a time when even though you said goodbye to everybody back home at least 30 times, you wish to have seen one person just one last time. One week ago this happened to me. A very close friend of mine was killed in a car accident, he left behind his wife and their two boys, tragic yes but he lives on in our hearts. I found out about the accident four days ago, I literally thought life was over, no for me but for his family. I mean he was a 32 year old, with an amazing family, had a great job, worked in the Children’s ministry at our church for as long as I can remember and was really changing lives. He meant the world to the lot of us older kiddies because he’d been working with us for so long. Finding out about a friends death is hard, it shakes you up a bit, but finding out about a friends death while you’re in a country thousands of miles away with 4 days left of your mission trip is even harder. 
Saying goodbye was the only thing I wanted to be able to do, if it wasn’t for him a lot of the young people in our churn probably wouldn’t be serving God to this day, including myself. I didn’t know what to do or how to feel other then weak and distant, my mom sent me text message after text message of how there’s no need to be upset because he’s in a better place, there’s no need to worry because through this life there will be lives brought into the kingdom. The only thing I want to know was how his wife was, now being widowed with two sons to take care of, I was shocked to the bone to here how much at peace she had. How, yes it’s hard, but she had God on her side to keep her comfort. Hearing all this made me think, if she has come to peace with all of this, and has been able to pick up the pieces, there’s no need to worry about what life will bring next.

I’ll be honest when I say that I’ve been petrified to come home. To even see my friends again, and my family. To have to make decisions that I never thought I would have to make, and say no to things I never would’ve thought twice about before. This might not be the same as loosing a loved one but when you see your friends are all shaken up by something and one takes the time to reach out to say your strong, to be doing this alone and so far away. It was hard, because on my mind also was, leaving a place I’d grown so fond of and then leaving my team. My emotions were a bit tangled, I knew I shouldn’t crumble so quick but then all the memories would come flooding back and I wouldn’t know how to feel. Beginning to think about going home scared me and when I thought about one person I thought about them all and how they’ve touched my life.

Goodbyes can be hard, they hurt a lot, especially if you had to say goodbye without them being able to hear it in person. But now we come home, with many things on our minds, God’s spirit coursing through our veins and an idea of the things we want to change. 

Saying goodbye and leaving seems like the worst thing in the world, but it’s just the beginning of your new chapter. It will have it’s ups and its downs but if you look towards God, no matter what you’re going through he’ll see you through. He’ll give you peace about the future and a strength you never thought you had. Let your fears never control you, because our God IS eternal and that’s all that matters.