Leaving on a jet plane . . . round two!

Well, I guess this is it.

I spent the evening with great friends and had my all-time favorite meal, and now I’m at the house staring at a rather massive conglomeration of stuff . . . that’s all supposed to go in these suitcases. Ha. When I finish the packing at about 2am, I’m hoping to organize the life I’m leaving behind a little better. If I finish that task (finish being a relative term!) I might try to catch a couple of hours of sleep–the next time I’m going to sleep well will probably be in about 44 hours.

Leaving days are “icky” in the words of a dear friend. You are ready to go, excited about reaching your destination, you’ve already said goodbye in as many ways as you can-and then you have to deal with the sorting, cleaning, planning, packing; the financial documents and approaching bills; the saying again of goodbye and have a good year.

Thus I am ready for this leaving day to be done, for the plane doors to be shut, for a chance to look fully ahead to what this stretch of life will hold.

So goodbye, all. I hope you have a great few months and every day experience more of the goodness of life, both in its joys and sorrows.

Over

The GRE, that is! Yea! Thanks for all your encouraging thoughts and prayers! And for listening to my sometimes sad attempts to learn my new GRE words by incorporating them into my conversations:-) I have never, ever written such a strong opinion about something such as face cream . . . but that’s the topic I got, so by golly, I talked about face cream!! What?! Who writes this stuff anyway? And does anyone want to tell me what pelf means? Because it was on the test and it wasn’t in the dictionary I searched in this evening!

Now that this task is done, I feel like my whole being is gearing up for take-off. I look around at my lists of things to do and the mountain of stuff I need to organize and pack, and I think I’m just going to have to give up sleeping. But that’s ok, I guess, because I’m going back to the land where “9pm is missionary midnight”!!

My suitcase is back in Jackson

These weeks of perpetually looking for my stuff in the mess of wherever I’ve landed are over, I think! I just returned from a crazy trip through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. It was again wonderful to connect with family and friends and the windy plains I so love–but I’m all tuckered out now.

I’m leaving for Ethiopia in 15 days. Just typing that leaves me a little stunned. In the whirlwind of the past 6 weeks it’s just crept up on me. And now that it’s here, there’s no turning back. I feel like I have three million things to accomplish before I step onto that plane–there’s the GRE and friends I haven’t yet seen, there’s sorting and cleaning, there’s shopping and packing, and there are goodbyes left to be said.

But I’m ready to go back to Ethiopia, to the place that for now I call “home”. Someone said to me a few months back that “home is where your stuff is” (Ok, so I rephrased it!). While I’ve got a lot of stuff stashed in MS, my living stuff is in Addis. My earthly home is destined to change many more times in my life, but for the next few months I’ll rest in the joy of knowing it’s in Addis.

Until then, I hope I savor the good things in this part of my life. And that I study harder than I am right now!