Waking Up to Say Goodbye

I woke up this morning to say goodbye. (That's not entirely true - I woke up because I wanted to pack the car before the day's weather became entirely unbearable.)  In waking, I woke to my last day living in Siloam...thus, in a way, I woke up to say goodbye.

The last six years in Siloam have been an incredible way to start off this "life of independence" that we're called to as we leave our childhood home after high school - taking steps down the road of learning to live on our own.

Six years has brought a lot:

Friends - through JBU and Fellowship Bible Church my world exploded with an amazing diversity of beliefs, perspectives, upbringing, expectations, hopes, dreams, and hurts.  My world expanded with these friends now living as far away as China and as close as Little Rock, where my parents live.

Travel - opportunities ranging from an archaeological dig in Jordan to a conference in Dallas to a business trip in Boston and to an inner-city immersion trip in Chicago.  Beyond these incredible experiences, college brought with it road trips to Seattle and Alabama.

Challenges - as the assumptions of my childhood were challenged, my faith began to be strained, stretched, and remolded into something different, yet better, not worse.  More honest and yet more faithful to the core of what had always been there.

Celebrations - over these 6 years I've been able to celebrate with nearly a dozen weddings and shouted/screamed as friends graduated from High School/College. 

These last 6 years have been more wonderful then I can ever express and brought about a gratitude deeper then anything I can ever convey.  

Even this final week brought with it an incredible sense of gratefulness - from an office-wide lunch on Tuesday (it humbled me that everyone was invited, not just one area) to a night on the lake with some of my closest guy friends (thanks Jas!) to a final tournament of Settler's of Catan with about a dozen other staff and faculty at JBU (rescheduled so that I could be there) to a church family that spoke words of blessing and encouragement as things wrapped up Sunday morning in that white church on the corner of Twin Springs and Washington St.  

I want to say "What a week!", but truly it goes beyond that to "What an incredible 6 years!".  I couldn't have hoped for anything better in these first years of "stretching my wings" and figuring out this thing we call life.  

I woke up this morning to say goodbye: to a wonderful beginning, to a fantastic final week, and to a town, community, and organization that has, in many ways, become a family.