Dancing Through Life

In the past month I have...

-Packed up and moved out of my very first apartment and very first home with Tyler (don't worry, Tyler is coming too!)
-Moved about 90% of our personal belongings to Owasso
-Accepted a much needed (gift from God) temporary job in Owasso
-Began to become very sad about leaving Joplin.

Man, what a strange thing it is to leave one home to go to another. The only two places I have ever really considered home are Owasso and Joplin. So much has changed within me since moving to Joplin, that moving back to Owasso seems a bit scary at times. I am not at all the person I used to be, for starters I am moving back to Owasso with a husband. It's just weird to move back home from the place I now know and love as my home.

I never knew I would be so terribly sad over leaving Joplin. I knew I loved Joplin as my new home but especially after church today and speaking with several students and their parents about us leaving, I am genuinely bummed to be leaving. There are so many students that I have just started relationships that I am dying to see all the way through high school. There is a student I got to see through three years of high school but am departing for her senior year. There are students I am sending off to college and wish I would be in Joplin for when they return for weekend visits.

I'm prepared for things like handling finances, I'm prepared to help students when they ask tough questions, I am prepared to be a minister's wife and all that it entails, but what I don't feel prepared for is how to leave a ministry. It's an incredibly hard process to say goodbye to students that I want to be here for. I know that God will protect them and guide them and provide the adults they need. But it's still extremely hard. It's hard to know what to say when a parent comes up and expresses their sadness over us leaving, even though we all know that it is best and that God's got something coming our way. It's still just so hard.

I thought that since everyone around us knew it was coming- that we wouldn't be in Joplin much longer after a full time youth minister was hired- that maybe it would make it easier. But it's still one of the saddest goodbyes I have ever had. I think there's a point to which I can be sad, but then there's a point in which I have to trust God enough to know that these students will flourish even after we are gone. I want to have a hand in it and I want to help control it, but the fact is that I can't. All I can pray is that the seeds we have planted will be watered by people that enter their lives in the future. I know it's not us that has made the difference but just what God has been able to do through us. It's never been my power that has done anything good but God's power through me. And God's power will still reside in Joplin through others after I am gone. These students will still be loved after Tyler is no longer their youth ministry. Now I must realize that God's got some other students for us to love.