Leaving Home, Going Home

The day is Tuesday, July 10.  We’ve been sorting and packing for days, and the sorting and packing continues.  The list I’ve written for myself says, 

1. Dust and sweep
2. Wash walls
3. Clean refrigerator and windows

Hilarious.  This assumes at the time of writing the list that 36 hours before leaving England, our suitcases are packed, all loose ends tied up, and I am actually looking for things to do.   I’m not even sure what Tuesday looked like now but it wasn’t what I’d written on my list.

Tuesday evening dear friends stop by.  We eat, we laugh and we feel sad that this is  the last time in a long time that we will hang out together.  We are comfortable together.  It’s easy.  We joke and are silly and serious, and we all want more of God.  Before they leave they pray for us.  Comforting and knowing prayers.  These are people who don’t want to let us go, but know that they must.  They know too, that God is up to something.... and that we must keep following the scent. 

The day is Wednesday, July 11.  There wasn’t much sleep happening for me last night.  I suppose it has something to do with the fact that in 24 hours we will be boarding a jet plane to fly across an ocean we haven’t crossed in a year.  Today I get to meet another dear friend for coffee.  She picks me up at 74 Five Mile Drive.  We load her car with things we can’t take home with us.  She drives me to Summertown Wine Cafe for our last coffee morning we’ll have for a long time.  We order coffee, the same, except I always add sugar.  I eat because I forgot to earlier.  She pays.  She always does this.  We sit and catch up and act like we’ll do it again next week, like we always do.  Conversation is deep and real.  We move outside to be in the sun and quiet.  We move inside the gazebo to get out of the rain.  We move back inside because the girl on her cell phone is unaware there are other people trying to have a conversation.  We pretend not to notice that time is slipping away.  I said I’d be gone an hour, I think it’s been two.  I know I have things to do at home, but I know that friends like this are hard to come by.  We like this sharing of our lives over coffee.  

Jeff and I pack up what’s left while it’s just us, picking and choosing what must stay.  We smile at each other, knowing smiles.  We say things like, “this feels so weird.”  The kids have been offered to stay home since we are leaving tomorrow, but they all want to go to school.  They have friends that they too, are sad to leave.  These friends have all thrown surprise going away parties for our 3 in recent days, giving them lots of memories and mementos to take with them.  The kids are blue when they get home from school, trying to hang on to the last drop.  But they’re excited for what’s up ahead, so they let the tears fall because they know in the core of them that even when it’s hard, God is good.  And He will always give good things to His kids.  They are learning to trust Him, just like mom and dad.  

The day is Thursday, July 12.  It’s 3:30 in the morning.  The house is woken up by this Jackson 5 song blaring through Jeff’s computer.  

The same people who helped us settle and find our way in Oxford, show up before the sun is up to help us again, only this time they’re sending us away to the world we’ve come from.  And now, instead of strangers we found in a phone book, they’re our friends.  We’ve come to love them over these months.  We load up our luggage and drive to Gloucester Green where we’ll catch a bus to Heathrow.  We are grateful for their kindness... these people who show love again and again, who are the face and hands of Jesus more than they know.  

It's a strange day.  We say goodbye to all that has become so familiar in this short and long year in Oxford, to the beautiful city and more beautiful people.  We remember the many ways that God has been amazing to us, all the ways that He became to us who He says He is.  

We know that we don't know everything that lies ahead.  But we are not afraid.  We realize that this faith journey we started in on was not just a one year gig.  We are in this for life.  We have left home, going home.  

"Faith is the confirmation of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses."   

Hasn't God himself given us this right from His hand, the ability to trust Him beyond all the things that we can see.... right into the abyss of all the things we cannot?  Yes, He has done this.  And when we followed him beyond all that we knew and felt secure in, He became more beautiful than ever He'd been before.