Leaving "Home"

"I feel blessed, sad, happy, grateful, bittersweet...so much all at once. I leave Indonesia in two days. The house is almost empty of our stuff. It's getting down to the end. Life is about to change big time. I'm not just going to America for the summer... I wonder when transition will hit me." June 9th

When I moved to Indonesia, I was starting fourth grade and I promised all my friends in Wisconsin that I would be back - in two years. We came back for the summers, but then we signed another two year contract, and another one, and...eventually the years added up.

I remember during the winter break of my freshman year my parents decided we were going to take a furlough for my sophomore year. I understood why we would and I understood the timing, but I was devastated. I did not want to leave. And I most certainly did not want to attempt to make friends at a public high school in America... and for only one year. I still remember exactly how I felt the moment I found out we were leaving. I remember the tears coming without restraint, and my face turing puffy red, and my aunt talking to me, and my brother hugging me as his girlfriend (later wife) sat on the red couch behind him. And I remember the sinking feeling in my heart realizing all the goodbyes I would have to say in a little less than six months. To me, that was extremely short notice. I felt I had no process time. To me and all my friends in Indonesia I was staying until we graduated in three more years, and suddenly I had to tell them all I would be leaving for a year. How was I possibly going to manage? Luckily, Mom and Dad changed their minds quickly, but that was quite the emotional roller coaster I went through trying to process leaving a country I once knew nothing about. I had fallen in love with my life in Indonesia.


I almost wonder if that speedy processing of my picture of what it would be like to say goodbye helped the recent real goodbye to be easier. It could have, but I also know that those next three years in Indonesia changed my perspective for leaving. After being the one "left behind" for nine years, I was doing the leaving. Except this time I had three years to prepare and a new adventure of college life to look forward to.

"I am officially en route to the U.S.A. Strange, though, this whole leaving Indonesia feels nothing like I thought it was going to. The goodbyes felt nothing like I thought they were going to. Ask me a year ago how I imaged I would feel today and I would say something along the lines of "I want to stay. I can't hold back the tears. I feel unprepared". That's pretty much the opposite of how I feel today. I feel like I am just READY. It's time for me to go. Nine years in Indonesia have been amazing and I am moving forward to the next big step in life excited and ready to take on the new-ness and independence that is before me." 


I wrote that on June 11th in my personal journal (and the journal doesn't lie). I was just simply ready. It wasn't a "I can't wait to get out of here" or "Whatever, I'm leaving", it was just complete acceptance of the life I lived in Indonesia and realizing how it shaped me as a person. It felt good. That doesn't mean it didn't ache or that it wasn't tough, because I promise you there were tears shed, but not in the ways I had imagined it would have been. The toughest part for me was saying goodbye to the people in my life.

"I have come to realize that Indonesia, to me, is really the people. Most of those people that make Indonesia for me have left, though. So, in a way, I have been saying my farewells to Indonesia through my farewells to people."


But the thing about saying goodbye to people, is that even though there is never a promise of seeing them again on earth (though sometimes we are blessed and God allows us to cross paths again), I will always know that there is a guarantee of seeing those in the body of Christ again, and I can only pray for those who are not, that I may see them again some day.

People are HOME to me. I may have a house in Wisconsin, lived the last half of my life in Indonesia, and have family and friends all over the globe, but I can't say I would call any stationary place HOME. HOME to me is where I feel loved, invested in, and where there is always space to grow. I will only ever be truly HOME when the Lord takes me to be with Him.