What God taught us by leaving.

I think leaving is a sacrifice that will permanently change us, if we will let it. I could not predict when the gravity of our decision to leave would sink in, but I knew it would. For me, it sank in when we were packing up the van with our last couple of bags. As I was upstairs, I looked at the squeaky floorboards of the 100-year-old house and realized this was the end. The sound of Cecilia laughing, as she played with my parents in the backyard, had a way of solidifying the thought. We would never call that home again. I realized we were leaving home and giving up home altogether, at least the way it had been.

We were saying ‘goodbye’ and that ushers in an irrevocable change, a loss. Yes, we do have the hope of spending eternity together with our family and even visits every few years, but we do not get to live our lives in two places at once. Cecilia doesn’t get to grow up in West Africa and near her grandparents simultaneously. We only get to choose one and this choice will shape us and our little girls.

I am reminded that Christ left His home and He is forever changed because of it. He is still in a human body, glorified, yes, but with enduring scares. We can’t help but wonder, what is God doing in our hearts that is worth all the pain involved in leaving? We pray, like Paul, ‘that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Phil 3:10,11

Saying hard goodbyes are worth it, because what we sacrifice temporarily God uses for our transformation, a deepening of our friendship with Him, a reward for being willing to sacrifice, and we get to experience the enduring thrill of serving Him by serving among the unreached.