Tonight is the last night in our home in South Africa. This fact is something I am still struggling to wrap my head around. Tomorrow we leave to return to the country Joe and I called home 7 years ago. Currently when we say home still in our minds we are referring to this house that I sit in now. I know the country we are returning to will become home again but this home we made in South Africa will always be home as well.
This is the place where we have had our most joyous moments as a couple and our deepest sorrows as a family. This is the place where we learned more about doing ministry as a team and where we learned to be parents. This is the place where we invited people into, not just into our home but into our lives. This is the place where we comforted each other when life’s struggles were overwhelming.
On this last night that we will sleep here I am scrolling through my to do list as well as so many memories of the last 7 years. The first time we walked through the doors exhausted from a long journey but excited to be in our new home. I remember the first time we hosted someone in our home. I remember finding out we were pregnant. I remember the first day we brought Peter home. I remember comforting each other when we found out that we had lost a baby (twice). I remember celebrating Peter’s first words, steps, other milestones. So many memories are packed into this place that is now in closing stages of being packed up and ready for whomever will next call this place home.
When I look around this place I can recall countless memories, some good, some bad, some silly, some frustrating, some ordinary, and some extraordinary. I am still having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that I won’t see Peter running up the stairs again or sitting in his little rocking chair, I won’t make brownies for anyone in the kitchen, or read Peter a bedtime story in his room upstairs. After tomorrow this place will no longer be our home, these rooms will no longer be our rooms. Even as the sorrow of this fact washes over me, the reassurance that the same God that was with us when we moved here, has been with us every day for the last seven years and will be with us wherever the journey leads us.
Tomorrow we step away from what we know and we continue to take steps of faith towards what we do not know. Even as we are going, I know who is walking with us, leading and guiding us. I also know that someday in the not too distant future (hopefully) I will be sitting and writing another blog from the new place we will come to consider home. From the new place that will hold our memories, laughter, tears, and our stuff. This new place will have whispers of our South African home throughout as will our lives. South Africa and the ministry we had the privilege to be a part of and the people we had the privilege to work alongside of, to come know and love will forever be a part of us and of who we are. The last 7 years of our lives will continue to shape the next 7 years. And this home and the memories will help us form our next home and the memories for the next 7 years.
So tomorrow when our family boards the plane we will leave a piece of us here and we will take a piece of here, there. If you think of it say a prayer for us and especially for Peter as we say our goodbyes and leave this place that is home.
