Count Down.

There are only 8 weeks left until I will be setting foot on American soil.  This will be the first time I’ll have been standing in America since April 2012.  By then, it will have been 1 year, 3 months, and 2 weeks since I have been HOME.  It feels SO far away right now, and some days I feel like I just won’t make it. 

It has been 2 weeks and 1 day since I hugged my mom. (She was here!)

It has been 9 months since I hugged my dad.

It has been 1 year and 3 months since I hugged my brother and sister in law.

It has been 1 year and 3 months since I hugged my closest friends.

It has been 1 year and 4 months since I’ve hugged cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents.

In that time my family has changed!  Babies have been born, houses have been bought, animals have been adopted, friends have died, friend’s unborn babies have died, people have lost jobs and gained new ones, people have moved around the country.  A lot has happened at home and I am SO eager to go back and face these changes, the good and the bad.  

I’m so eager to hug my friends, to share meals together at restaurants with them and hear about all of the good things and the bad things they have experienced these last few years.  I’m so eager to share the simple pleasures of friendship like ice-cream cones at the lake, shopping for clothes we don’t need (actually, most of my wardrobe will be staying here… so girls you better be ready to SHOP!), catching up on all the gory details of the TV sitcoms that I’ve missed these two years (or not missed J ) and just BEING together. 

I’m so eager to meet new babies in my family, to congratulate my cousin for her recent college graduation (she was salutatorian!), to meet my cat-nephew Levon.  I’m eager to beat my brother in board games. (Watch out! Your game-deprived sister is coming home... that is 2 years of pent-up competition!!)  I’m eager to worship again in my own culture surrounded by my amazing church family who has supported me through thick and thin these last two years.  I am SO excited that the first thing I get to do when I get home is be a bridesmaid in my best friend’s wedding.  

I have SO SO many reasons to be counting down the weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds until I get to re-embrace HOME.   And yet there is another count-down happening in my mind:

Only 8 weeks left.  At the end of these 8 weeks I will be saying goodbye to Zambia.  This is my HOME.  I have lived here, sweated here (literally and figuratively!), cried here, laughed here, learned here, grown here.  I have family here.  People who correct me when I’m wrong, encourage me when I succeed, support me when I’m struggling.  I have friends here.  People who laugh with me, laugh AT me when I do stupid things, and who simply love me for who I am.  I have a cat who follows me around like a shadow and a dog who runs with me on a long dirt road under the hot African sun.  I have children who greet me with a running-hug, a huge smile and a very loud “HI AUNTIE!”  I have watched friends die, watched babies be born (literally!), experienced real life struggles and joys in a whole other world.

Above all, I have a story here.  I lived a life here. Pilgrim Wesleyan Bible College and its students are a part of me.  Zambia is a part of me.  The Lord has done powerful work in my life here.  He has taught me endless things about who HE is.  He has used me in beautiful ways to teach, guide, and love these people who have been called to his ministry.  I am incredibly blessed to have been a small part of building Christ’s kingdom here in Zambia.  Although, relatively speaking, my work here has been small and short, Zambia itself is a BIG part of who I am now.

A part of me will be grieving during these last few weeks I have here, and a part of me will be rejoicing.  There certainly are many things that I WONT miss! (I can’t WAIT to have a long hot shower without worrying about the water running out!!) However, I know that I am leaving behind one family so that I can be reunited with another.  It is bittersweet.  And yet, in the midst of it all, there is JOY.