Saying Goodbye...

Saying goodbye is never easy. Goodbye means change. Change is hard.

In a place like YWAM where people come and go constantly for schools, missions trips, volunteer opportunities and sometimes just to visit, “Goodbye” is said far too often.

Something I have discovered in the last year and a half of being here is that no matter how many times you’ve said it, it doesn’t get any easier.

We’ve had people of all ages, cultures, and walks of life, and for the few weeks or months they are here, they become family.

A tatted up pastor’s kid, who slept under my parent’s kitchen table for a night, with an upbeat personality from Switzerland; a quiet and reserved guy who has a great sense of humor from South Korea; a tall white boy who loves singing Adelle and is beast at making blackberry jam from Missouri; a South Korean girl with a heart for missions like mine; an adventurous and outdoorsy family from Pennsylvania; a girl with a great sense of adventure from Canada; a photographer who claimed he found a “rocket” from Kansas with a heart for Latin America; roommates from Brazil who would let me pour out my heart as we cooked and ate together; a guy from Mexico who inspired me to learn more Spanish; a runner from Alaska who’s biked cross country; and the list could go on…

These people have come and gone, but they’ve left their mark on my heart.

They have inspired, encouraged, and comforted me. We have talked, ate, cleaned, traveled, laughed, sung, and even cried together. We were friends, and we were family.

While I hate saying goodbye, I have found this one fact to be comforting – I now have a home in various areas of the world; on every continent almost. It’s like I told one friend, just the other day, in my broken Spanish, “Mi casa es su casa. Ahora yo tengo un casa en Mexico.” “My house is your house and now I have a house in Mexico.”

I can’t help but think that the people whose lives have crossed my path, isn’t just a coincidence. I believe that while (as much as I hate to admit this) there will be some people I never see again, I think there will be others that I will one day get the privilege of eating, talking, laughing, crying, and ministering alongside with again.

Thinking of that gives me hope and gets me excited.

I know I still have many more goodbyes to say, but I also know that “hellos” are in store as well.
 

So thankful for this journey I’m on and the people I meet along the way,

Brittaney :)