"We are the Only Ones Leaving."

Sage advice I was given my neighbors who were moving the day before we did two years ago. I thought I understood at the time what it meant, but I have really come to understand it this time around. 

After thirteen months, we have spent what time we could with people.  As a whole, if we really wanted to spend the time and felt it was reciprocated, then we did. While with some people, time is never enough, no matter how much of it you have together, and others you feel close to without it being a large quantity of time. So as our time drew to a close, I did not feel the rush to spend time with people like I did two years ago. Don't get me wrong, there are people I wish we could have gotten together with more, but overall, my heart is full of the sweet moments we did have. Thus, when it came time to focus on packing and play dates had to be forfeited, I was ok with that.  Rich and I knew what had to be done to get prepared to leave. We could not rush from one thing to another and still get ready. We were the only ones who could do the packing, because we were the only ones leaving. 

That coin had another side though. When it came down to leaving, we could not expect people to drop their lives to say goodbye to us. Our time was short and it was hard to plan ahead. We seized opportunities that arose at the last minute. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. People have their lives that will go on once we leave. After all, we are the only ones leaving. 

When we boarded the plane after our 8 month stateside in 2013, I felt like there was just not enough time. Now after 13 months in the states, I feel like we had more than enough, maybe too much. It is a strange thing to leave a place that should feel like home because it is filled with family, literally and spiritually, to go to a place that feels like home, where we have so little family. Just makes me long all the more for that eternal home, with no more goodbyes. Heaven is my real home. I am just a stranger passing through.