Two months from now I will be stateside. The chapter in my life lived in Ethiopia will be in the past and a new chapter will begin. Two months. That is how long I have to drink up each and every moment here, that is how long I have left to be transformed by this experience, and that is how long I have left to do what God has placed before me on this side of the world.
Each season has it's ups and downs. But now, with two months to go, I feel like I am in a constant state of reflection. I have just enough days left that it is not overwhelming. I am close enough to the end that I am not experiencing even the slightest bit of homesickness. For that I am grateful. I am also close enough to the end that I am constantly feeling more challenged than ever to appreciate the now, the moment that God has placed me in.
When I started this journey, I thought these feeling would never come. It seemed like a year might as well have been a lifetime commitment. That's not a bad thing, but I so often found myself taking the moments for granted. Wishing parts of them away so that I could be back with my family. But as you would assume, now that each day seems to fly by faster than the last, I am willing time to slow down because what lies ahead of me does not seem nearly as impossible. I feel like that is part of what God desired to teach me in this year though. He wanted me to enter what felt like the impossible so that He could be glorified in the wonder of possibility. He wanted me to step beyond my comfort zone so I could both grow and lean on Him in new and undiscovered ways. He wanted me to leave the norm not to change the whole world, but to make a difference for Him.
I have said time and time again, at the end of this year my one desire is to feel God say to me, "Well done my good and faithful servant." I still have a lot ahead of me, but I hope that even up until this point I have fulfilled what God has asked of me, placed before me, and entrusted me with... Because this year, this not-so-normal path I have chosen, is purely because I love Jesus and this is what He asked me to do.
