This is hard...

Everyone's asleep in the house. Everyone but me. I was on my way to bed, just now, and stood up in the dark living room, and stopped. I looked around, and it struck me, really struck me, that this is almost over.

I don't know how that is. I don't know how we are leaving. We just got here.

We just got here.

It's not really 2015, is it? It's still August 2012. My airplane just landed at the Ouagadougou airport.

I just walked out the front doors. I just had my first experience of being overwhelmed by Burkinabé rushing around me pushing phone cards and kleenexes and gum packets in my face.

I just drove down the airport road towards my new home for the first time. I just witnessed little children playing in a sewage ditch. I just passed a boy riding a donkey. I just entered my home and smelled that foreign unfamiliar new house smell.

I have lived here for nearly three years. But, I don't know how that can be because our time here has passed too fast, without my permission, and now we are at the end....

....and I don't know how to say goodbye. I don't know how to let it all go.

I am a very experienced mover, so really, this shouldn't be too hard for me. It's not new. We know how to move. But yet, this is harder. It's harder because before when a move was on the horizon, I knew what to expect. Not all the finer details of course, there is always navigating a new city and making new friends. But most everything else is the same. I know what to expect in the U.S. I may have moved to a different state, but it's all the same culture, same language, same stores, same expectations for living. But this. Life in Burkina Faso. This is, this was, different. This was new in every way. And leaving, leaving will be thousand times harder.

I don't quite know how to do that. This place has changed me. Changed my family. This wasn't some short lived two week vacation where we got to experience a little bit of culture and then go on our merry way. This wasn't like me visiting Paris where I got to dip my toes into the culture just a wee bit, experience some cuisine and observe some differences and then go home, back to life. Going home here, was Burkina. It was living with the vast differences in lifestyle every single day. Different language. Different culture. Different everything. Everything is different now. Isaak said a couple weeks ago, "living in Burkina has changed the course of our lives."

Yeah. It has. How could it not?

We dug our heels in deep here. Despite Isaak's job with the Embassy and my commitments at home with the children, but were really intentional about our time here. We wanted to get involved and minister and do life right. We realized that we only had three years. That's it. Just three short years to live here....and we didn't want to waste it.

I remember thinking that before we came. Saying that to myself over and over, and again all throughout our time here.

"Just three short years.....make 'em count."

And I think we have. I don't have any regrets. I don't wish we would have done more. We were able to do so much. No regrets. None. The Lord has blessed our time here immensely! He has opened doors for us to partner with friends who are serving here long term. He has educated us. He has placed mentors and incredibly wise people in our lives who have lived here much longer than us, to speak wisdom and knowledge into our hearts and minds. These last few years have been the greatest. The greatest of my life.

So, I don't sit here tonight sad, longing, wishing with regret that we had done more, lived better. I know we're not perfect. That's not the point. The point is not loving perfectly. The point is not whether we learned everything. Of course we didn't. The point is whether or not we followed God, if we were open to His leading, if we were flexible to bend and learn and grow and love and step outside our comfort zone and be used in the imperfect ways He asked. And...yeah, I can say we did that. Not in a perfect way. But in a way that we pleasing to Him. In a way that brought Him glory. In a way that challenged us and changed us.

And I am so happy tonight. So much so I can't put it into words. It's just too much. I am so happy that the Lord gave us this opportunity. A trillion words wouldn't be enough to sing on His behalf to sum up my gratitude for this opportunity. He is so generous. So magnificent. To let us live here. How can I ever thank Him? It would never be enough.

He blessed us with three short years. I wanted to make them count. We wanted them to count. HE wanted them to count, to mean something, to change us, to completely alter our lives down to it's very foundation.

And I believe they have.

This has been the greatest adventure of my life. The hardest. The most challenging. Living here brought me to my breaking point more times than I can count. But I'm so grateful for it all. Every. single. moment.

And that, is what I don't know how to say goodbye to. That is what I don't know how to leave behind. It's too overwhelming. Our whole lives here the last few years, everything that God did in our lives and through our lives....how do I leave this place?

It is not going to be easy.

But before I leave, I want to take some time each day to write a little bit more about life here. Some parts that I haven't written about. Some experiences we've had that I haven't written. Some stories that have gone unpublished. Share some pictures that have gone unseen. To share a little bit more, before it's over. I feel like, with only thirty days remaining....that's a good way to help prepare my heart to say goodbye.....