All beginnings are hard

I'm settling here just fine, elbowing my place, scootching in and finding out my responsibilities, privileges, duties, order. I'm meeting people and discovering different things. Everything is new, and while I am truly enjoying it, as of now my heart isn't tied to Fresnillo. In contrast, there are three missionaries who just left the area here. Ashley has spent the last year here, working in a position very close to what I am doing. Jonathan and Christine have been here around a decade. They met here, got married, have had two children, and now they are moving to Kansas where they'll take over the family farm.

Watching their farewells has been difficult for me. Mostly I stand on the side and watch as they say goodbye to the people they have come to know and love to deeply. I stand on the side and avert my eyes at their tears: not because there anything shameful in it, but because I feel outside this deep connection. Not purposefully or rudely, but by the simple fact that I have only known these people a matter of weeks. I do not belong and yet I am in the process of belonging.

Chaim Potok has a book called In the Beginning and he says, over and over in that book, that all beginnings are hard. It's difficult to break new ground and flourish in a different setting. And it is: my beginning here isn't a piece of cake. I think, however, that beginnings can be especially hard because endings are so. For me, the ending of my Wheaton time was really quite unpleasant. Leaving home and flying here was full of hope but also trepidation in case hope remained unfulfilled. There is a loss of stability and a daring leap to a new place. Watching the difficulty of Ashley's and Jonathan and Christine's endings reminds me of the thousands of tiny deaths that occur whenever a change happens - the death of possibilities, and what might have been. But there are also births that blossom out of these sacrifices - new places to be, vistas to see, work to do, and people to know. And over all of this a Plan, maybe not exactly what we would have wanted, but a good plan, led by a Good God.