Ups and Downs

Today is the first day where I am officially preparing to go home.  I will spend this week packing and sending the last of anything worthwhile home, cleaning my room and saying my goodbyes to all of my friends and collegues.  Today this all hit me rather solidly as I walked back from breakfast, "this is it, it is ending."

I guess the best way to look at it is "bitter sweet."  I am leaving most of all I have known for the past year to return home to what I love most.  What I have known is more then what you would find back home in a sense that the people that I have become close to I have become really close to.  There is so much emotion and need I guess when you are all away from home that it adds a new dimension to fellowship. 

We are here living together but everyone is alone and lonley, if that makes sense.  Thaink of each Holiday, birthday, first day, ball game, Sunday Sevice, small group etc, where you are not with your family.  You may be with others but not the ones that own your heart.  This is why I say a different level of closeness.  In the states I recall people talking about finding intimacy in a small group and then holding on to it like a precious jewel. Here intimacy comes immediately, and the rest see it as an opportunity to show mercy and grace, compassion because it stems from that same deep hole that we are all in together.  I don't know if that made the point but I will miss it tremendously, and hope to gain it back home.

This is also a week of "lasts".  Everything that I do will be the last time here.  Monday night prayer with Robert and the other Kenyan men.  Tuesday "I Am Second" with Mike, Val, Ryan and the others.  Wednesday night Open Bible study at the Chapel.  Thursday, Manly Men, Whooha with Ryan, and the rest of the guys, this is one that I will bring home with me for sure.  Also dinner with Chief, Gun Ship Piolet exstrodoniar who does not wear a skirt and high heals of course!  Sunday Shindand Holy Smokes, the only Christian Cigar outreach that I know about on Sunday nights, and sitting with Walley on the deck having a smoke together watching the activities on the flight line as the sun goes down.  There is something about an Apache riding through the setting sun that gives you goose bumps.

Oddly enough there will be some lasts here that will transfer back home also.  This will be the last week that I have to call into my Accountability group at 3:30 in the morning.  It will be nice to have that meeting be face to face and at a reasonable time.  It will also be the last weekly phone call to Frank for our Discipleship, he has been a loyal friend this year and again we can st in actual fellowship face to face again.  Lastly, and Steve will be happy for this, no more bringing Mike in a box to the Staurday morning Mens Group.  I will again be able to sit with my Brothers at the church rather then ojn Skype as we have done.

I have so much anticipation for the return though and I have been praying heavily for God to bring me through to the next step.  I want to see where God is working when I return and bring myself to that for Him, place myself where He will need me most.  One of the biggest things on my heart is becoming the True Man of God my family needs me to be and the one that God made me to be.  I must be the Spiritual Leader of my House and fight everyday for the Salvation of those within it.  I think about it alot as I know that I have grown this year and this aspect of my calling will be different in my house.  Yes I was the father, but not necessarily the leader that I needed to be. 

I also pray for my ability to come back into the fold with my friends and the Church.  Alot can change in a year.  I, being absent, may not know all that has occurred for in my mind it is still primarily June 2010 back home.  New relationships await and old ones may be gone, things will not be exactly as they were.  I pray that the Lord keeps my heart open and my mouth closed for a while until my reality and that which is actual come back in line with each other.

So, I am sure that I will have ups and downs this week.  I will say goodbye and probably cry a hundred times as this all winds down.  I will also cry tears of joy as each leg of my return home unfolds until Saturday the 25th when at 9:30 in the morning I will set foot Home Again and see the faces of my family.

Lord, I trusted in you and continue to trust in you.  This is not over, just changing.  Continue to give me your strength, grace and compassion as it unfolds.  Amen