In the last month there is this problem that I keep running into : How do I move forward without leaving everything behind?

Prior to doing this 9 month school in LA with YWAM I had one fear, one reservation. I hated the idea of being put into this environment where I KNEW I would grow to love the people around me but then be forced to say goodbye…not even a “see you later” but most likely a genuine, this world, “goodbye.” I’ve been through this before. And it’s not fun.

Move to a new place, build relationships, find a community that feels like family and then before I realize it, have to say goodbye and watch a piece of my heart fade in the rear view mirror.

It’s painful. It’s my least favorite thing in this life. Because of this I have pieces of my heart scattered all over the world. People who have impacted me, challenged me, loved me. People I laughed with, cried with, and laughed til I cried with. People who I have grown with and seen step into greater more full versions of themselves. And each time I have to say goodbye I wonder if I will ever be able to do this again. Will I ever be able to build friendship like this again?

My favorite book, The Great Gatsby, closes with this line “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Sadly, in my pursuit of relationships, community, or friendship I often adopt this posture. When the next season comes I will fight to recreate the past. I will fight the waves of the future that are trying to push me forward as I tirelessly try to manufacture the relationships I’ve had in the past. It. Never. Works. As we see in the story of Jay Gatsby, his attempt to recreate the past is futile. By constantly fighting for the past Gatsby missed opportunities in the present; he missed possibilities of new relationships, new experiences. He got himself stuck, never achieving his goal and never truly living life.

As I have been processing through this cycle of “goodbyes” and essentially mourning the 9 months I spent in LA, I have been thinking about all the other times I have felt like this.  And I realized something, all of these friendship and relationships I never thought I could recreate where always outdone by my next season in life.

Now, that’s not to say the friends I have now are better than friends of the past. But I truly believe that God brings specific people into our lives at specific times. The relationships and friendships I have had in the past are a piece of that season of life, a valued and essential piece that have their own significance and character in my heart when I get a chance to embrace them again. The relationships I have now are specific and unique to my life right now and the ones that God will bring my way in the future will be what I need then.

So how do I move forward without leaving everything behind?

Honestly I still don’t know. I still feel like I’ve lost something special that I can’t regain. Then I remember that this is how I felt when I said “goodbye” before this, how I knew I would never find a community like that again, but I was proven wrong. I found those friendships. I found that community.

Remembering this fills me more with hope and excitement than dread for the next season of relationship and community I going to discover. Because it will be new. It will be different. I will be what God knows I need in this part of life.

Isaiah 43:19

I am about to do a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.