4am

It's nearly four in the morning. My throat and cheeks and stomach hurt from laughing long. I'm tired with that kind of contentment that comes from hard work and deep study. I'll say it again- I don't know how I can leave all of this.

It crashed down on me tonight, the reality of leaving. I was sitting in my sister's room, praying for the girls gathered there. We had just finished an amazing study and I was lifting them up to God. In the midst of it, it was suddenly clear that this adventure I'm going on really does come at a price. (I'm not sure how that's managed to escape me up until now.) Starting in February, these girls will still be meeting, still be opening the Bible and digging deep. But I won't be there. I won't be there to learn from them, to pray with them, to walk with them. I won't be there to make pizza and play scattergories and have loud, crazy dance parties which I'm sure have the neighbours shaking their heads. And I'm going to miss it.


I can't help but think back to the question one of the kids from my sunday school class asked me after I did a presentation on Mercy Ships at church this past week. His little second-grade self half lifted out of the chair as he struggled to make sure I could hear him from his seat way in the back of the auditorium. "But why don't the kids just go to the doctor or the dentist? Why do they have to go to a ship?"

It is a blessing that I live in a country where the idea of not just going to the doctor when you're sick is completely foreign. Unfortunately, I am the exception rather than the rule in this world. So I'll go. And I'll miss my kids here. And it's okay.