bittersweet

As I've been telling people about our upcoming Peru adventure, I've been saying "I have bittersweet news." Tonight I tasted both the bitter and the sweet (along with a generous helping of chips and salsa).

Around 30 people gathered at a restaurant (Mexican, as the options for Peruvian food in Binghamton are severely lacking) for a goodbye dinner for David & me. These are people that we're connected with through my job at Life Choices Center. I was asked to stand up and say something, and as I looked at the faces around the table, I felt overwhelmed and fumbled for words.

I know these people--some of them intimately--and they know me. What a unique feeling to be part of a community like this, to be known and loved. It's sweet.

And then to think about leaving all that. That's the bitter part. A community like this takes time to develop, and here we are just walking away from it. Are we nuts?

And then--because we're too far into this thing to back out now--I convince myself that no, we're not nuts. And I look at it in a different way.

If my life is a piece of string, and each of their lives are pieces of string, then through this community, our strings have crisscrossed for a brief point in life. And so much good has come from even that short time our strings touched. So many memories, life lessons, and shared laughs. I have learned a lot from serving with these people. I'm a better, stronger, more confident, more humble, more gracious, and more patient person because of their influence in my life. I've seen Jesus in each of them.

It will take time to build another community. And it will look and feel different from this one. But how exciting to imagine what good things are yet to come as my life string crisscrosses with the lives of others ... in the southern hemisphere.