They say doing a year like this is jumping into the deep end. But I experience it quite different. Jumping into the deep end only comes after doing a year like this.
These people have been a part of every moment of my shaping and changing.
They push me to be better. To press in when I feel like I can’t. To look up instead of surroundings. To pray first, always. They know me better than I’ve ever experienced someone knowing me, and I see Jesus in every single one of them so clearly.
Parting from this family is to jump into the very depths of the deep end.
I’m sitting in the airport of Istanbul, waiting to board the plane back to South Africa. Well, I guess this is it. Doesn’t matter how hard I try to grab this year, them, with both hands, I could never hold this forever, even though it’s all I want to do.
I could never have this year again. Have it over. Over and over and over.
I know it’s time for all of us to go. But the going is probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.
Excitement inside me is surely big and bright for the future and what it holds, but leaving is bigger.
I will thank God every day for the memories I could make and the things I got to experience. But I could never thank God enough for these people.
I pray that you will know how much you are loved.
I pray that everything you do will be a natural overflow of Jesus within you.
I pray that in the tough and in the easy you will seek God with all that you are.
I pray that you will grab everything God wants to give to you with both hands, and then give it back to Him.
And then there’s the overflowing incomparable thankfulness to what Jesus has done in my life this year. I’ve tried and tried to put it into words, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that, no matter how hard I try.
What He did is so much bigger than the world could ever understand, than I could understand.
I remember at the start of all this i thought to myself “I wonder if I will change as much as they say you do”, and here I am, changed to my very core, sitting in the grace that Jesus poured out on me the day He gave His life so that I could have mine.
He shook my cup.
He challenged my thoughts, and then changed them.
He planted seeds that turned into dreams.
He broke down walls and broke chains.
He healed and restored and replaced and bettered.
He put me under an endless waterfall of His love.
And now
All I have to say - I say with tears in my eyes, but a completely full heart.
I treasure you.
And I will never forget you.
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