Leaving...

Right now I am sitting in a hotel room at the Delta Airport Hotel.  We have said our last goodbyes today, which has been hard.  It has been an emotional end to an emotional week.  

At this moment, with the exception of a few boxes of sentimental things in storage, everything is contained in five duffel bags, four backpacks, two laptop bags, and some boxes in various places around the world.  We don't have a place to live, we have no cars, we don't even own a bed to sleep in or a chair to sit in.

We also have no clue what the next few days holds for us.  We will be getting on a plane tomorrow, and will get off the plane 30-something hours later in a new city, a new culture and a new life.  What have we gotten ourselves into now?  I guess there is no turning back at this point.

There are many things that each of us are going to miss about our lives in Canada, and many people that we will miss seeing.  The new friends that we make will never take the place of those we have left behind, and the new experiences will not take the place of the old ones.  We simply have the opportunity to expand our horizons, to try some new things, to learn a new culture, and to make new friends.

We often get people commenting that they could never do what we are doing; giving up everything here to go somewhere we have never been, to commit three years of our lives to this adventure.  And I think that's okay.  This is not the life for everyone and there is nothing wrong with it.  What we are doing is not any more noble or valuable than what those of you who stay in Canada (or the US or England or wherever you are from) do with your lives.  But this is what God has called us to do.  So we go.

Sometimes the cost seems too much.  Sometimes I want to stop this journey.  Sometimes I want to say no and to return to my life of working and paying bills and buying cars and fixing cars and replacing lightbulbs and going to our church and going on roadtrips to unique places in the summer.  Sometimes my ideal future involves growing old in a house that we own, having a 1995 Toyota MR2 fully restored and modified in my garage, and seeing my kids graduate from high school with the same kids that they started grade 1 with.

But usually those times are fleeting.  I can see how God has been directing us in this adventure, and how He has poured out blessings on us as we follow Him.  I know that twenty years from now I will be able to look back on all this and be thankful for the awesome privilege of what we are doing.  After all, who wouldn't want to get away from cold Canadian winters to go to a tropical paradise?

So here we are, in a hotel room, awaiting a plane to take us to the next stage in our journey.