It's hard to put into words what it feels like to leave. To transition. To sell all your stuff and move on. To reflect on the past four and a half years. To sort what feels like pieces of your heart into three piles: take, sell, donate. To say good byes. To say see ya laters. To say nothing at all.
It's hard to put into words the ambivalence of emotion. The joy. The excitement. The sadness. The overwhelmingness. The peace. The heartbreak. The guilt. The hope. The disappointment. The laughter. The tears. The anxiety. The comfort. The thrill. The fear. The confusion. The gratitude. The peace.
It's hard to put into words how to say goodbye. To places I visit everyday. To people who have seen me at my worst and best. To a culture who taught me how to love. To a language that has been both the bane of my existence and a euphoric type of high.
I've heard it said that it's harder to be left than it is to leave. This could be true, to some extent. I've been the one left before - I've waved my goodbyes with tears streaming down my face, wondering how life will ever feel okay again. Wondering if my heart had just burst open right there before me. Wondering if it was really possible to ever get past the sudden sense of loneliness. Oh, I've been left before.
But leaving...leaving brings it's own kind of pain. It's a different, more gradual type of thing. It's a grieving that doesn't come all at once and knock you down. Instead, it slowly wraps itself around you, forcing you to slow down and feel it's weight. It's a complicated, confusing type of sadness that can feel guilt-inducing one day and simply annoying the next. It's a strange concept - to make a decision knowing it will bring that messy, inexplicable kind of pain. To choose pain, in essence.
It's hard to put into words what it feels like to leave. Most days it's too overwhelming to even think about. But there are those few precious moments - where everything seems to slow around you and suddenly you can breathe again. Peace that transcends all understanding washes over you and you just know. You know that at the end of the day - it's right. That you didn't hear wrong, that you didn't choose incorrectly, that this isn't a mistake. You can feel down in the depth of your bones that no matter what level of sadness or hurting or heartbreak that day brings, that you are exactly where Jesus wants you.
Someone I deeply respect shared this quote from Charles Spurgeon with me recently and I continue to return to again and again: "Remember this: had any other condition been better for you than the one you are in, Divine Love would have put you there." Leaving is hard. But it where Divine Love would have me for now. So I'll lean in and keep breathing in His goodness every step of the way.
